tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237Mon, 19 Feb 2018 23:06:48 +0000Fire, Salt, and Light.Reflections and comments on all aspects of Catholic and Human Life.
"THE FIRST LAW OF HISTORY IS NOT TO DARE UTTER FLASEHOOD; THE SECOND, NOT TO FEAR TO SPEAK THE TRUTH." attributed to Pope Leo XIIIhttp://blog.hopeforpriests.com/noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)Blogger294125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-8552875047737945419Mon, 19 Feb 2018 23:06:00 +00002018-02-19T16:06:48.298-07:00CULTURE OF GUNS & DEATH<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Once again, with the high school massacre in Florida, we see the vaunted American notion of exceptionalism has a very deep dark side to it. <span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;</span>Equally vaunted, the American right to </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; margin: 0px;">"<b>Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness</b>", is overwhelmed by the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“right to bear arms”</b>.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Every country, my own included, has its own murderous history.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">However, compare the Five Eyes countries [ Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States: so-called because their intelligence services cooperate closely] and we find, considering mass shootings as involving the killing of at least ten people, Australia tightened its strict gun laws after the last mass shooting there in 1996; there is no legal right to own a gun in Canada, which tightened its gun laws after the last mass shooting in 1989; likewise New Zealand – 1990 their last mass shooting and the United Kingdom, 1996 the last one there.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Each of those countries emphasizes strict background checks: criminal, domestic violence, mental health of applicants for gun licences.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">So, what then, in the United States, makes the situation so different and perplexing for the rest of the world?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">It is too easy to presume it is primarily because of the legal right to own guns in a country with virtually no restrictions on the type of weapons, including military type weapons, nor the number of weapons a person may own.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The Second Amendment to the US constitution in and of itself is not the problem. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The lack of restrictions regarding weapons designed for military use, and the lack of strict licencing requirements, such as the mandatory background checks among the other Five Eyes countries, exacerbates the problem of easy access to assault weapons which the deranged can use with such horrific effect as in Florida.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">There is, however, a more fundamental issue not discussed in the US, nor in any of the Five Eyes when it comes to violence, to the murder of one human being by another, an issue which in Holy Lent we all should consider for while certainly efforts, real, courageous efforts, should be undertaken in the United States to begin to control the millions of weapons held, and sadly so often used, by the citizenry,<span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span>all of us must seriously undertake the work of resisting the deepening darkness of the culture of death within each of the Five Eyes, countries whose Christian tradition reaches back millennia, but also countries which have chosen to become post, even anti-Christian.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The Preface for Holy Mass of the First Sunday of Holy Lent reminds us that Jesus <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“…taught us to cast out the leaven of malice…..”</b></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">It is clear, from the details of the first recorded murder in human history, Cain’s murder of his brother Abel, Genesis 4: 1-8, malice is always present when one human being murders another.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Each of us has undoubtedly at some point allowed the emotions of jealously, malice, anger, perhaps even hatred to stir within us, but most human beings are able to, by grace, embrace and be faithful to the commands of Christ to love one another, do good to those who injure us, to pray for, to forgive our enemies. [cf. Jn. 13:34,35; Mt. 5:43-48 &amp; 6:9-13]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">We should focus this Holy Lent on the urgent need for each of us to disarm our own hearts, to embrace and live out the Gospel of Life, for as St. John Paul reminds us in his encyclical of the same name: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gospel of God’s love for man, the Gospel of the dignity of the person, and the Gospel of life are a single and indivisible Gospel. </i>[Op.cit.2.4]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Of all the Five Eyes Canada alone is the most anti-life, having no abortion law whatsoever, hence babies may be murdered right up to the moment of breach, and Canada also allows assisted suicide. The other Five Eyes have varying degrees of abortion laws, none of them allow, yet, assisted suicide.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Quoting the Second Vatican Councils’ document, on the Church in the Modern World, St. John Paul stresses the passage remains relevant today [Op.cit.3.3]: …..<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonour to the Creator. </i>[para.27].</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">A prayer response then to the mass shooting in Florida, to the culture of darkness and death engulfing the world, is to pray throughout this Lent for the conversion of the entire human family from all forms of hatred and violence, for the healing of the mentally ill and better health care for them, that men and women would choose, rather than murdering their pre-born child, to seek out adoptive parents, that individuals and families will choose hospice care, rather then enabling self-murder.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Meditating anew this Holy Lent, by choosing St. John Paul’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gospel of Life,</i> for Lenten spiritual reading, will strengthen our resolve to live the Gospel with our lives without compromise, loving one another, including our enemies, and little by little, we will push back the darkness of the culture of death.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Here, as St. John Paul urges, we turn anew to Our Blessed Mother, for She helps us in the great struggle of life <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">…between good and evil, between light and darkness…</i>[Op.cit.104.3], quoting the Sequence for Easter Sunday the Pope reminds us anew <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Death with life contended: combat strangely ended! Life’s own champion, slain, yet lives to reign.” The Lamb who was slain is alive….He alone is master of all the events of history: He opens its “seals” [cf. Rev. 5:1-10] and proclaims, in time and beyond, the power of life over death.</i>[Op.cit.105.1,2]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/1274-ZjE2IA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/1274-ZjE2IA/culture-of-guns-death.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2018/02/culture-of-guns-death.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-7799147605455718287Sat, 27 Jan 2018 17:30:00 +00002018-01-27T10:30:37.478-07:0073 YEARS SINCE AUSCHWITZ LIBERATION: HAVE WE LEARNED ANYTHING? <br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The embedding within my heart and memory of the SHOAH, the holocaust, was as a small child when newspapers and magazines produced photographs of the starved, wide eyed with terror survivors and of the ovens, the piles of bodies and newsreels when I was somewhat older, my heart pierced by the images of children rolling up their sleeves to show the tattooed numbers, which, bluntly ‘thinged’ them, reduced them and their elders from human persons to disposal units of slave labour and worse: disposal sub-humans.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The arrival in the city, sometimes on what in those days were called ‘tramp steamers’, meaning they were at the bottom of the shipping pile, sometimes in Third Class on less than luxurious liners, between the end of the war and as late as 1951, of so called ‘displaced persons’ from Europe was a steady flow of the traumatized, the survivors, the widowed, the orphaned, the frightened.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">There being virtually no impediments for even young boys to wander around the docks we would, if one of those vessels of human sorrow was unloading the broken seeking hope, seeking life without terror, go and watch and be overwhelmed because both the reality of what caused these men, women, children to be arriving and the obvious hatred which was the core cause, our little brains could not fully comprehend.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Later in life, before becoming a priest and after, I was humbled to learn in conversation with survivors, not just Jewish Brothers and Sisters but a priest from Poland who had himself been stenciled and put in a camp, what evil truly is, what evil does and how otherwise apparently sane human beings, with power, factually ersatz power but bloody destructive nonetheless, can do to their brothers and sisters.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Elie Wiesel [tattooed as A-7713] who survived both Auschwitz and Buchenwald writes: “Never shall I forget that night, that first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night….Never shall I forget that smoke…..{from his book NIGHT}</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">St. Maxmillian Kolbe did not survive, offering his own life in exchange for that of a young husband and father, who did survive.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Love is stronger than hate and is the victory, rooted for believers in God who is Love, for those who do not know Him rooted in simple faith in the foundational reality we are all human beings, each a person.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">But, but, have we learned anything since the SHOAH and its six million slaughtered, since the horrors of WWII with its fifty million dead and additional tens of millions wounded, widowed, orphaned, displaced?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">We live when the new normal is the violent hatred of Islamists spreading terror and death among fellow Muslims and throughout the world, when a nation ostensibly faithful to its Buddhist tradition, a religion which like Islam claims to be a religion of peace, slaughters the Rohingya and casts them out of their homeland; the new normal of not knowing when some hateful nut will plunge the world into nuclear war; the new normal when otherwise normal people elect governments which slaughter the unborn, allow the sick and elderly to be euthanized.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Today, with solemn ceremonies we make a show of remembering and honouring the victims of the SHOAH.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Yet our memory is selectively simplistic.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">To remember means to learn from the remembering.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">To honour the victims means never to ourselves be victimizers.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Each needs to look deep into our heart, especially those corners in shadow where lurks evil spirits of harsh judgement, rejection, hatred, a hunger for vengeance.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">We need to ask Christ to purify our hearts that we exercise only the power of love, that we stop electing politicians who are anti-life, for their hands are overflowing with the blood of our brothers and sisters, blood which splashes on us each time we cast a ballot unless we choose life and vote accordingly.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">73 years since.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Are we finally willing to learn?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/zdXdCGOtjCA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/zdXdCGOtjCA/73-years-since-auschwitz-liberation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2018/01/73-years-since-auschwitz-liberation.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-7330464182447686986Wed, 17 Jan 2018 23:28:00 +00002018-01-17T19:54:43.084-07:00THE POWER OF LITTLE<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Decades ago my then spiritual director told me he had been praying for me and heard in his heart from the Lord to tell me the Lord wanted me to do: “Exceedingly little things for love of Me!”</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">I should note that at the time I was pastor of three parishes, frequently giving missions in other parishes, giving lectures, writing, teaching – sort of big stuff, at least for a priest.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Learning to do little things, things that mostly go unnoticed, was/is a tough lesson to learn, to do, to trust. </div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Examples of the power of little from Scripture are numerous, among them, these from Jesus Himself: St. John tells us how Jesus used a little of His own spit and some earth to make mud and heal a man’s blindness [Jn.9:6ff], St. Luke tells us how Jesus took a few little fish and loaves of bread to feed thousands [Lk.9:16ff], St. Mark reveals to us the power of a cup of water [Mk.9:41ff], and St. Matthew reveals to us how we shall be judged upon little things like giving someone attention in various ways [Mt.25:31ff] – all examples and more of Jesus simplifying life for us to do little things, for each&nbsp; other, thus for Him.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Long before I was a priest, I was on staff in a soup kitchen [ bus fare in those days was only 25 cents].</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">One day I observed and overheard a conversation between an elderly man and a very young man.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">It was a bitterly cold winter day and the older man was going to take the bus to the shelter while the young man wanted to take the bus across the river for, he said, a chance for a job.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">The old man said that all he had was 25 cents.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">The young man was crestfallen.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">The old man gave him his quarter – a little coin really.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Not everyone will ask for help, no matter how little the help they need may be.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">However, big need or small need, if we are always waiting to be asked we will miss vital clues about need.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Yesterday I was on one of the smaller buses used on routes with not a lot of demand. One woman had been waiting at the stop with me and we had been chatting about family. When we boarded the bus, there was only one other passenger, an elderly woman.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">When there was a pause in our conversation about family the other passenger said: “I have no one.”</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Almost in unison the other woman and myself said: “We’re here, you have us.”</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Awareness is the key to the power of the little.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Awareness of other.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">If we are other aware, rather then predominately self-aware, then we will hear clearly, see clearly, and love’s imagination will reveal to us the myriad of little things we can do – and their power will do what it did for that woman on the bus: she smiled for she had been recognized, embraced as a person, included.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/Q8ceIIfKfQc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/Q8ceIIfKfQc/the-power-of-little.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2018/01/the-power-of-little.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-2826402758929993934Sat, 13 Jan 2018 16:37:00 +00002018-01-13T09:45:18.067-07:00WANTING TO BE GOD<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Many years ago, a wonderful priest who, from the founding of his community until his death was the general superior, told me of getting a long and excruciatingly detailed letter from the superior of one of the congregation’s mission houses and how he had sent the letter back with this comment under the end of the letter: “You want to be God, job already taken!”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The other day I chuckled when Pope Francis told this old bromide in an address, one I have heard from other priests over the years:<span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span>An elderly woman came to confession and spent a long time listing the sins of others until finally she stopped expecting absolution. The gentle priest said to her: “Wonderful. Now that you have listed the sins of our neighbours, how about confessing your own!”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Ever listed God’s sins?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">There is throughout the human family a dangerously dark, angry, violent tendency, today perhaps more than ever in human history, to judge, condemn, blame and when we do so, when we give into xenophobia, racism, blaming, rejecting we are factually accusing God of sin.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Since everyone is made in His image and likeness to evaluate, judge another human being is to accuse God of the sin of creating a flawed, broken, less than worthy of existence someone.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">To objectively state that Islamist terrorists are doing evil acts is not only appropriate but shining a necessary light into the darkness – however to name an individual, be they a terrorist or……[choose one] – as evil is to usurp what is God’s alone, judging, for He alone sees what is the actual state of our hearts.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">When I was working in the inner city, long before ordination, in a soup kitchen, there was a woman who even among the homeless was rejected, abused, because she was not just a prostitute but one totally lacking in any degree of self-respect.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Yet one day when a huge, drunk man was attacking me she used the only talent she had to distract him, lead him away, and literally saved my life, for I was being attacked by the man using a broken beer bottle, trying to slit my throat.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">A few days later the police found her body in a ravine.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Jesus said of another woman, and I say in His Name of that woman, much has been forgiven her because she loved much [Lk.7:36-50] and indeed she showed, for me, that greater love of which Jesus tells us [Jn.15:13].</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Globally everyone in the 21<sup>st</sup> century is reading back into history to find reasons why everyone outside our own group is to blame for all our groups’ perceived wounds, frustrations, etc., etc.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">While objectively in the past one group did do horrible things to another, to be in bondage to blame and unceasingly demanding some form of compensation/redress ultimately is wasted energy and simply prevents any form of healing or reconciliation – be it unfolding within groups, between nations, religions, within families etc.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Our time and energy, our love and creative energies are better spent discovering how we can heal internally, that is within the group, between nations, within marriage and family, etc., indeed be healed ourselves.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The way is found within the Person of Christ, within the Gospel, within the moral and social teachings of the Church.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">No amount of changing of laws, no amount of money will heal one single wound.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Only love is strong enough, creative enough, generous enough to heal and renew.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Nations do it, religions do it, populations regarding government do it, management does it, workers do it, spouses, parents, children, siblings, neighbours, friends, even we against ourselves do it: judge, blame, reject, wallow in unrelenting stress and an ever growing disconnect from love, peace, unity, all because we fail to head Christ’s admonition and warning about the consequences of judging and judgement: Matthew 7:2 &amp; Luke 6:37.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">We need to rediscover the difference between objective observation, for example Islamic terrorism is evil and therefore must end, and judgement: naming so and so as an evil person.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Only when, with putting on the eyes of Christ, I see other as one like myself, beloved child of God who is love, will true healing and reconciliation be possible.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The objective observation [the polar opposite of judgement] is necessary if we are to identify and respond as needed to any threat to human beings/society – thus we all need to re-learn and live out, without compromise, both the entire Gospel and the teachings of the Church, such as in Bl. Pope Paul’s Humane Vitae and St. John Paul’s The Gospel of Life.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Failure to do so, and quickly, means we are persistently, all along the way poisonously, angrily judging and condemning, heading towards and off the proverbial cliff, only this time our whole civilization will crash and burn. [Lk. 13: 1-5]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/daxfJLsemBg" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/daxfJLsemBg/wanting-to-be-god.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2018/01/wanting-to-be-god.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-8793542533895111633Sun, 24 Dec 2017 23:33:00 +00002017-12-24T16:33:02.801-07:00CHRIST IS BORN, WHERE, WHY?<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn….{Lk. 2: 1, 4-7} In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it……And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us….{Jn. 1:1-5 &amp; 14}</i><br /><i><br /></i> <br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">St. Luke gives the name of the place, how it came to be, that Mary and Joseph found shelter in a cave where Jesus is born and laid in a manger.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">St. John notes further that Jesus makes His dwelling among us.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">St. John Chrysostom in a Christmas homily calls us to: Behold a new and wonderous mystery.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">How then do we behold this new, wonderous mystery of where, why is Christ born?</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">By going into the depths, as swimming deep in the ocean, way below the surface, where rays of sunlight still penetrate and where, in a sense, we are both in the living waters and bathed in light.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">His dwelling among us is more, much more, than ‘among us’ as we are among others on a crowded train, busy street.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Sunlight penetrates skin, air permeates our lungs and blood.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">It is in this permeating, indwelling sense that Christ IS born among us.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Mary, Joseph, and the newborn Jesus, were homeless, forced from their home and town by government edit.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Jesus is born among, and within the manger-heart of every human person, be it during war, ethic cleansing, famine, or other disaster, who is forcibly uprooted and rendered homeless or in a refugee camp.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">In His life among us He experiences hard work, poverty, calumny, rejection, betrayal, false accusation, hunger, thirst, such extreme mental anguish He sheds blood, experiences abuse, torture, execution, burial.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">Therefore, He is born within the manger-heart of everyone who is bullied, lied about, rejected for whatever reason, of each person who is exhausted by hard work, including those in consecration and labour camps, forced as children to work as slaves or child soldiers; He is born within the manger-heart of every abused woman, man, child, within those hidden places of human suffering in isolation cells, mental health wards, ICU’s and hospices, prison cells, the deep loneliness of orphanages, old age homes, the dank, dark dangerous alleys where hearts painfully beat under cardboard boxes, in the cold, there, there He is excited to be born.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">The manger-hearts of those suffering mental illness alone, perhaps in denial, addictions of all sorts or having to sell themselves to have food or the illusory comfort of some momentary connection; in the always at risk manger-hearts of the watchmen in the military, police forces, fire departments, ambulance services: here too He is passionate to be born.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">There is no condition of any human heart, no place on earth, where He is not amongst us as surely as Our Lady places Him in the manger and St. Joseph watches over Him.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">The human heart: this IS where Christ is born.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;">O ineffable grace. The Only Begotten, Who is before all ages…..has now put on my body…..that I may be capable of His Word; taking my flesh, He gives me His spirit; and so He bestowing and I receiving, He prepares me for the treasure of Life. He takes my flesh to sanctify me; He gives me His Spirit, that He may save me. {St. John Chrysostom}</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/TyJJlK8MhNs" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/TyJJlK8MhNs/christ-is-born-where-why.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2017/12/christ-is-born-where-why.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-4912118969927333583Fri, 08 Dec 2017 02:24:00 +00002017-12-07T19:50:22.371-07:00HOW LIBERALISM'S CONSEQUENCES ARE DEHUMANIZING CIVILIZATIONS<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</span></span></div><br /><span style="margin: 0px;">I have been struggling to write this for some time. </span><br /><span style="margin: 0px;"><br /></span> <br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Then when I awoke early this morning this northern city was blanketed by such a thick fog and ice crystals you could not see across the street and I understood we are indeed as a civilization around the world, the whole human family, desperately trying to find our way, yes to do battle, in a fog of ideological war thicker even than we understand and even more poisonous than the smog which has engulfed Delhi for weeks now. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Ask most people what are, the greatest threats to civilization and at least part of their answer will include Islamist terrorists, economic stress, overall anxiety.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The greatest threat, is <u>relativism</u>, the child of poisonous philosophies dating back to the so-called Age of Enlightenment.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Relativism has so permeated civilization, even to a certain extent infected Christianity, that the danger to our cultural, intellectual, political, economic and faith lives is a clear and present danger.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Unpack any aspect of what has so many millions and millions of people stressed, fearful, virtually hopeless and you will find the destructive virus, the poisoning bacteria of relativism in its many variations.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;</span>Some terms: </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><u><span style="margin: 0px;">Fog of war</span></u><span style="margin: 0px;"> is that fearful confusion and uncertainty experienced in the chaos of battle. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The roots of the current fog of war and chaos throughout human society, of the fear, anger, shouting which disables hearing other, let alone listening dispassionately to their point of view, which may change nothing but at least is honest communication, those roots are sourced deep, and millennia ago, reaching their culmination in the age of so-called enlightenment.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><u><span style="margin: 0px;">Enlightenment</span></u><span style="margin: 0px;"> stresses individualism and human reason rather than tradition. The Achilles heal of this approach is it uproots us from the acquired wisdom of the past, opens the door to destructive philosophies such as utilitarianism, fragments family and society and leads to the current climate where the “I” as my rights, or my group’s, trump everyone else’s.<u></u></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Flowing from the so-called age of enlightenment, comes <u>liberalism,</u> whose prime tenet is tolerance, but is applied in ways which lead to the radicalism of intolerance.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">A prime aspect of the liberalism society: <u>humanism</u> which attaches primary importance to the so-called autonomous self. Liberalism, without even listening to counter argument/objective truth, asserts there is no place for the divine, that is the existence of God and His Law, thus humanists’ base everything on the conviction that the rational and autonomous self is ultimately the arbiter of everything, hence mantras such as: “That may be true for you but not for me!”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">In the Renaissance period there were some scholars who attempted a form of Christian humanism, but this is self-contradictory for one is either a Christian, thus one who believes in the Divine and follows His Law, or one is a humanist who refuses to be bound by God or the things of God.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Erasmus tried to bridge the divide with his notion of <u>via media</u>, thereby irritating both sides! Via media means moderation, leading ultimately to compromise, in all thoughts and actions. Via media, the so-called middle way, had a certain popularity among some Christians until around the turn from the 19<sup>th</sup>to the 20<sup>th</sup> century and had a brief revival in the 1960’s.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Can there be, however, for faithful Christians any form of via media, one that is a non-compromising center?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Yes, and it is to be right there with Christ on the Cross, centered in Him.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">If we are centered on and in Christ, rooted in the Gospel of life, we will neither fail to defend the sacredness of life, for example, from the womb to the tomb, nor deny compassionate understanding for those on either extreme of the issues at hand.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Compassion means a willingness to understand the pain of other, to dispassionately dialogue with them, to walk with them, as Jesus with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, as long as is needed for conversion of heart to take place.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Then there is <u>conservative/conservatism</u>: the people who embrace conservative social, political, economic, religious ideals drive the liberal side absolutely nuts. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">When the two groups encounter each other rarely is there a dispassionate conversation about ideas, in fact at its mildest the encounter results in each side trying to out scream the other, at its worst riots ensue.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">An authentic conservative is a person with a deep understanding of the human person, of objective moral truth, compassion for the poor, understanding for those suffering any form of discrimination, is a person who exercises political and economic wisdom but who is portrayed by the liberal media and their fellow travelers as emotional Neanderthals, as the guilty party for every ill in human affairs since Adam was a little boy.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Conservatives understand history in its length, complexity, its unfolding. Liberals do too, unfortunately they are more likely to cherry pick and seek to re-write history, which is disingenuous at best, a type of ‘fake news’ at its worst, to sustain their so-called progressive agenda.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Both sides need to learn dispassionate communication/dialogue skills: the liberal mentality blames all human ills on Christianity, for example, and then goes apoplectic when a conservative wins an election; conservatives blame all absence of morals, societal ills, jobs losses on liberals and likewise go apoplectic when some liberal wins an election.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Blaming hurts, blaming angers, blaming closes the mind and heart to dialogue.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Both sides do it.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The chasm grows ever wider, ever deeper, the fog ever thicker.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">There is also <u>nihilism</u>which at its core is the rejection of all principles, religious and moral, which leads to people living lives of not so quiet, but truly hopeless, materialist, hedonistic desperation. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Exhaustingly searching for meaning, a search flawed by its very nature, for the search is conducted within a maze of philosophical ideas, quick fix systems, wherein the individuals on this search are simultaneously bent towards themselves and split, as it were walking beside themselves, for unable to accept the splendid truth that they have neither self-created their beings, nor can self-sustain existence, they wander the maze of each day ever more distant from themselves and the splendour of truth, the fullness of life, existence, the inexhaustibility of experiencing the constancy of Love Himself who creates and sustains us, calls us to communion of love with Himself always seeking us, seeking leave to allow Him entry into our being as life itself, the way of life, as truth.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The very evil child spawned by all the others, a type of philosophical slurry permeating, poisoning, engulfing civilization, one human heart, one human soul, one human mind, one human will at a time until we find ourselves living in the darkness and death, the fearful confusion, the disintegrating of contemporary civilization, headed towards a catastrophe beyond imagining: <u>Relativism: </u>this notion/idea has morphed from mere philosophy into the dominate doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Hence: <u>cognitive, moral [ethical if you wish], situational, dogmatic relativism:</u></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><u><span style="margin: 0px;">Cognitive relativism:</span></u><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;</span>cognitive refers to relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering): based on or capable of being reduced to empirical factual knowledge. It should be noted there is a serious weakness therein:<span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span>“Cognitive dissonance”, a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time; engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs, and is prevalent among our contemporaries: for example, those who profess they are Catholic YET go along with things society accepts but which contradict revealed, objective truth such as direct abortion, the evil of murdering a defenceless, pre-born human being.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">This dissonance is the natural offspring of cognitive relativism, which affirms that all truth is relative to the individual person.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">As this prevails within the mindset of a society no ‘system’ of truth can possibly be more authentic than any other, nor have more influence than any other, so inevitably society/civilization finds itself without any universal standard of truth and so what follows is, name any field: religion, politics, economics, philosophy, etc., etc., is the predominance of having no understanding of consequences/responsibility/ because the entitled/self-centered-self “I” dominates, devoid of any ability to understand “other” as one like myself. Ultimately then comes the denial of God who is Himself absolute truth and within that denial of God and of objective truth comes the complete loss of any understanding of the true self and our place within the human family, on this earth, in this cosmos.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><u><span style="margin: 0px;">Moral relativism:</span></u><span style="margin: 0px;"> this reduces moral choices/ethical choices, to those relative to the consensus of the group, such as political parties or extremists of one hue or another, in which these choices are formed and found, hence moral relativism does not, indeed cannot, admit of any moral/ethical code or behaviour which could be accepted as universal in its principles or choices.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><u><span style="margin: 0px;">Situational Relativism: </span></u><span style="margin: 0px;">The rather over simplified definition of situational relativism/ethics declares it is the situation which determines the morality, the rightness or wrongness, of the choice a person makes. Existentialists, like Kierkegaard, as well as others like Sartre and Heidegger pushed this situational type of ethics and, frankly unfortunately as with humanism, presuming the best of intentions, some Christian scholars, such as Bultmann, Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer, asserting the priority of ‘agape’ as the litmus test for choice, suggest therefore a Christian form of situational relativism/ethics.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">It is true Jesus gives us the Great Commandment, the summation and fullness of all commandants, that we are to love God, love one another, as we love ourselves, which means to love self as God loves me.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">All true love is visible in action.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Situational ethicists, who claim to be Christian, claim situational relativism is justified by their appeal to the ancient tradition of agape.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Agape, from the Greek and adopted early in the life of Christianity as that highest of all forms of charity must, as is the reality of true love, be other directed: God’s love for us, our love for God, our love for one another, for love is self-gift to other.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Therefore, there must be, of necessity, a clear and immutable code/law of love which trumps every situation. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">This means asking for the gifts of prudence, discernment, truth-thinking, from the Holy Spirit.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Finally, and a false theory which facilitates among Christians in particular, relativism in all it forms, there is <u>dogmatic relativism:</u><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span>Those who espouse this theory assert that all the dogmas of the Christian faith are time- and circumstance-conditioned as if God’s self-revelation was <u>not</u> completed in the age of the Apostles but somehow is ongoing and thus this theory completely negates the teaching authority of the Church. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Yes, there are potentially many things which threaten individuals, societies, civilization and the human family, from plagues to terrorism and wars and a plethora of others.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">What, truly, is the greatest threat to us as individuals and as the community of nations, to civilization itself?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">External threats, albeit with immense suffering, death, trauma, we human beings have shown, do show, an extraordinary capacity to deal with them, to come to the rescue of one another.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">It is rather the internal threat, that is what threatens our capacity for rational thought, for wisdom in choice, for peace of mind, heart, soul, which poses the most pernicious, and difficult to confront danger.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">It is, like an ever-thickening fog, ever deepening darkness, ever spreading wave of death, revealing how millions of people, indeed entire societies are either not confronting the evil or apparently are unaware/ chose to ignore this reality, because of not being open to the wisdom of God, exemplified in the person and teachings of Christ and the constant reiterating of His Person and teachings by the Church.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">This dangerous threat clearly is relativism in all its forms for fundamentally relativism, including situational and dogmatic relativism is foundationally atheistic, diametrically opposed to Christianity.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Take the matter of the blasphemous use of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, a stable utterance for decades in innumerable films, television series, novels.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">While the left is obsessed with its rather fluid concept of so-called Islamophobia, it allows for no such assertion about those who attack Christianity.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Ever wonder, why those same people never utter the name of Mohamed in such a way?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">No doubt they are smart enough to know if they did so, they would likely, and quite literally, loose their heads.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">So, how to we find our way, safely, through the fog, out of the poisonous darkness of the culture of death?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">As a boy growing up in one of the major seaports of this world I was used to the sound of foghorns, the circling lights of the lighthouses when the fog was thick or the seas rougher than usual.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">These guides for ships to keep them safely away from being smashed against rocky shores, or stranded, immobile, on a sand bar, serve as a reminder we, in the fog of war and the darkness of the culture of death, have beacons and a voice to guide us: Christ our Light Himself and His words, and the beacon of the Church and Her teachings.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">From the treasury of the Gospels and the Church:</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Jesus says: “I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” [Jn. 8:12]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Matthew 5: 1-16 is that part of the Sermon on the Mount which is the one side of the template for authentic agape, indeed St. Augustine says: “If any one will piously and soberly consider the sermon which our Lord Jesus Christ spoke on the mount, as we read it in the Gospel according to Matthew, I think that he will find in it, so far as regards the highest morals, a perfect standard of the Christian life: and this we do not rashly venture to promise, but gather it from the very words of the Lord Himself. For the sermon itself is brought to a close in such a way, that it is clear there are in it all the precepts which go to mould the life. For thus He speaks: Therefore, whosoever hears these words of mine, and does them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that hears these words of mine, and does them not, I will liken unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. Since, therefore, He has not simply said, Whosoever hears my words, but has made an addition, saying, Whosoever hears these words of mine, He has sufficiently indicated, as I think, that these sayings which He uttered on the mount so perfectly guide the life of those who may be willing to live according to them, that they may justly be compared to one building upon a rock. I have said this merely that it may be clear that the sermon before us is perfect in all the precepts by which the Christian life is moulded…..” {Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount}</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">The other side of the authentic agape template is found in Matthew 25:35-40, where Jesus tells us “I was hungry, etc. and you fed me….”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">To appreciate what Jesus teaches us, to live it out, we also need to heed St. Paul, especially in our day and age: “See to it that no one captivate you with an empty, seductive philosophy according to human tradition, according to the elemental powers of the world and not according to Christ.” [Col.2:8]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">“Called to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, "the true light that enlightens everyone" (Jn 1:9), people become "light in the Lord" and "children of light" (Eph 5:8), and are made holy by "obedience to the truth" (1 Pet 1:22). This obedience is not always easy. As a result of that mysterious original sin, committed at the prompting of Satan, the one who is "a liar and the father of lies" (Jn 8:44), man is constantly tempted to turn his gaze away from the living and true God in order to direct it towards idols (cf. 1 Thes 1:9), exchanging "the truth about God for a lie" (Rom 1:25). Man's capacity to know the truth is also darkened, and his will to submit to it is weakened. Thus, giving himself over to relativism and scepticism (cf. Jn 18:38), he goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself……. No one can escape from the fundamental questions: What must I do? How do I distinguish good from evil? The answer is only possible thanks to the splendour of the truth which shines forth deep within the human spirit, as the Psalmist bears witness: "There are many who say: 'O that we might see some good! Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord' " (Ps 4:6). The light of God's face shines in all its beauty on the countenance of Jesus Christ, "the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15), the "reflection of God's glory" (Heb 1:3), "full of grace and truth" (Jn 1:14). Christ is "the way, and the truth, and the life" (Jn 14:6). Consequently the decisive answer to every one of man's questions, his religious and moral questions in particular, is given by Jesus Christ, or rather is Jesus Christ himself…..” [from the encyclical of St. John Paul: The Splendour of Truth]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">“A misguided anthropocentrism leads to a misguided lifestyle. In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I noted that the practical relativism typical of our age is “even more dangerous than doctrinal relativism”. When human beings place themselves at the centre, they give absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative. Hence we should not be surprised to find, in conjunction with the omnipresent technocratic paradigm and the cult of unlimited human power, the rise of a relativism which sees everything as irrelevant unless it serves one’s own immediate interests.” [excerpted from Laudatio Si by Pope Francis]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">“How many winds of doctrine we have known in these last decades, how many ideological currents, how many fashions of thought? The small boat of thought of many Christians has often remained agitated by the waves, tossed from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, etc…..Every day new sects are born and we see realized what St. Paul says on the deception of men, on the cunning that tends to lead into error (cf. Ephesians 4:14). To have a clear faith, according to the creed of the Church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. While relativism, that is, allowing oneself to be carried about with every wind of “doctrine,” seems to be the only attitude that is fashionable. A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the “I” and its whims as the ultimate measure.” [excerpted from then Cardinal Ratzinger’s homily at the opening of the conclave which elected him as pope, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/cC-oXmPGfHw" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/cC-oXmPGfHw/how-liberalisms-consequences-are.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2017/12/how-liberalisms-consequences-are.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-2123184699593187652Tue, 17 Oct 2017 01:52:00 +00002017-10-16T19:52:25.486-06:00SHARDS OF GLASS<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">I close my eyes, to shut out the images,</span></span><br /> <br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">the noise, of the culture of darkness and</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">death and once deep inside my soul</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">allow my heart to travel the world, </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">neither time, distance, nor heat of day, or cold of night,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">inhibits the heart from traveling.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Eyes wide open, ears attentive, seeking, seeing,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">listening, I arrive in a huge city, filled with </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">minarets, </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">while hot desert winds blasts sand against my face, as though </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">a legion of furies is afoot.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">I looked towards those towers, hear the call to prayer,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">sounding like a howl, a howl of millennia voices,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">seeking God, yet aware of loss of Christ. </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Walking through crowded bazars, down alleys,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">hearing explosions as various sects slaughter-bomb each other,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">the cries of mothers overpowering all other sounds,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">the ocean of their tears turning sand to earth,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">as their tears become within my heart as</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">shards of glass.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">My prayer O Jesus that You </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">reveal Yourself to them, comfort them for they are </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">huddled before You like the women who cried out</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">to You at Your eighth station on the via dolorosa.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Whirl of prayer wheels, clinking of thumb cymbals,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">sound of bells, air heavy with incense and dampness</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">permeates my body, high amongst mountain clouds,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">my unshod feet sense the cold of stone hallways as</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">towards me on the air comes the relentless guttural</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">chant of robed monks, seated amongst huge statues of </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Buddha and dragons.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">My cheeks wet with tears, my soul trembles, as in this</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">place of angry, dark spirits I feel the pain of unrequited</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">yearning, see You bent over, weeping with Your longing to shatter the darkness,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">to illumine these hearts.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">I embrace another onslaught of shards of glass,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">for unknowing yet knowing,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">they seek Your pierced open heart, gateway to love and mercy.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">How I yearn my own heart, for all who cry, who seek,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">be opened as passageway to You.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">There is no tiredness, no hunger, no thirst, save a participation</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">in Your sitio, when heart-traveling. </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">No sense of passage of time,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">rather wonderment and, be there any burden, it is the bearing of</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">burdens weighing upon those we see, hear, meet,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Suddenly, it is heat and humidity of amazon jungle depths,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">amongst a people so isolated there is no awareness of You or</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">of others, persons like themselves,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">but there is a hunger, deep-relentless-hunger, for within</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">each man, woman, child, longing for the True Bread, seeking for</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">a guiding star, such that each time a newborn is gazed upon</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">tears of longing flow, for some how they know that this is not yet</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">the expected Child – and these tear-shards are luminous and enter</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">my heart as gift.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">There are places hidden from public view and media scrutiny, </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">peopled with millions of our brothers and sisters, men, women,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">children.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">They have names soaked in blood, hatred and despair: gulag,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">death camps, labour camps, concentration camps, refugee</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">camps, prisons: max, super-max, minimum, or the seemingly</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">less harsh: jails.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Other such places of suffering have names supposedly to</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">assure ourselves the suffering are not forgotten: homeless shelters, </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">soup kitchens, emergency shelters for the battered and abused,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">hospices, hospitals of all varieties, nursing homes – yet,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">yet, in all these places, move dark shadow-spirits of fear, loneliness,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">and death.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">There are too dark alleys and steam grates, tents among the thick </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">trees of city parks, </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">I must walk within all these places, must smell the smells, hear the screams,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">gather the tears – for human tears, like Christ’s, are the most</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">precious droplets of water upon the earth – for tears flow as sadness, as</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">cry that someone might hear me, see me, and tears sometimes flow as</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">joy for a human being has been born, a love offered, a dawn unfolds,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">snow caresses the cheeks of laughing humans skiing, snowboarding,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">watching a child gamble about – but the places I am in now are places of </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">pain’s tears while echoes within these places, as from the depths</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">of a spatial black hole, a voice hateful and harsh, angry </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">because the darkness spews forth with each word – for</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">satan is the bearer of despair and cannot choose blindness for the </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">brightness of Christ dwelling within all who suffer, are wounded,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">alone, shreds all darkness,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">yet the voice is that of a Dostoyevskyian Grand Inquisitor,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">demanding Christ leave, abandon the very ones He so loves,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">loves so every tear is His, every pain is His, and must be for me.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">I touch the shards of glass that have so filled my heart it</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">is as if my heart is made of glass – become a prism - </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">of His light that ever more,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">as I go where human beings are,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">wherever human beings are,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">His Light will shatter the darkness,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">restore life, wipe away all tears.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">For now, a rest from the journey that</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">at His altar lifting the paten there be a</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">place within the bread for everyone who has</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">no place, lifting the chalice that all blood shed,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">every tear wept, be comingled therein with</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">the wine,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">and once I have spoke His words and Bread,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Wine become Him and I am nourished,</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">my heart has room for more shards and</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">the journey begins anew.</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">Alleluia!</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><span style="margin: 0px;"></span> <br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/1NF394YEvVs" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/1NF394YEvVs/shards-of-glass.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2017/10/shards-of-glass.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-8781253106457995841Mon, 04 Sep 2017 21:40:00 +00002017-09-04T15:40:11.073-06:00DUNKIRK: A MEDITATION<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Long before the film, Dunkirk, was even released my son said we should go see it, so a day was set, once the release date was advertised.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Then weeks went by as family obligations, his client obligations, kept the plans about the movie being delayed.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Then it was his annual father and his sons’ week camping in the mountains. I knew he and my grandsons would be back late on a Friday evening, so did not expect we would see the film for some time yet, as no doubt he would be rather worn out after the trip.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Well, bless him, my son phoned on his cell once they were far enough down from the mountains for the call to get through and set things for Saturday after a brunch together.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Dunkirk is called a film but it should rightly be called an epic.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">In one of the closing scenes in the film THE QUEEN, we hear the Queen say: “Duty first, self second. That is the way I was brought up. That is all I have ever known.” </div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Following Jesus’ teaching for we Christians there is more than duty, there is choice: God first, my brothers-my sisters second, I am third.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Jesus tells us: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.” [Jn.15:13].</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">We all love dramatic hero stories, starting with Christ Himself, where the one who makes the self-gift to other pays the ultimate price, as have done through the centuries the martyrs, such as St. Maxmilian Kolbe, and then, representing the whole spectrum of humanity, those on the front line: the military, the police, the firefighters who often within the daily laying down of their lives also pay the ultimate price for us.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">This self-gift is not shown the way we might expect in this ‘war’ film.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">While this is a film rooted in an event in a war, it is much more a film about human beings trapped in time and place, in unrelenting uncertainty, where some do lay down their lives to the death, yet most are simply trying to get out of the trap they are in, to survive.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Because my son not only treated me to the movie but to a nice brunch beforehand, followed by a stroll and a chat, when we got to the theater neither of us wanted the usual popcorn and drinks or candy.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">It was only a few minutes into the film when I realized what a distraction from taking in any film munching away is.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Granted given the low calibre of 99% of films, munching is almost a necessity, when taking in an epic best not to be distracted.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">There are two verses from John Dryden’s poem: Wounded But Not Slain, that kept coming to mind after taking in the film.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">I use deliberately the expression ‘taking in’ because while we might view/watch most films, this Dunkirk epic must be taken in because it is a lesson our so angry, hate filled, violent, at enmity with one another human family needs to learn.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">From Dryden:</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">I’m wounded now, but I’m not slain</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">I’m bruised and faint they say</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Just let me lie and bleed awhile;</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">I’ll not be long this way……………</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">………..I’ll bind these wounds; I’ll dry these tears;</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">I’ll close this bleeding vein;</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">I’ll not lie here and weep and die;</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">I’ll rise and fight again.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">The exhausted thousands shown on the beach, are more than just background for the few characters who are fleshed out somewhat – not with long minutes of dialogue, for any of the characters zeroed in on to reveal the terror of the unfolding evacuation use words sparingly, as if each word were one of a few remaining cartridges for weapons no longer of much use.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">The thousands are, in many ways than just from the bleeding holes in their bodies, ‘wounded but not slain’.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">They, like those manning the small boats, are ordinary human beings.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Like most of us a mixture of strength and weakness, courage and fear, generosity and selfishness.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Which of those dominates has as much to do with our early life formation as the immediate situation which confronts us and, unless we are alone like deep in the bush confronted by a wolf, how we choose to act, with courage or cowardice, is often determined by the mood and choices, the behaviour of those around us.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">True courage is not the absence of fear.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Fear is a type of life preserver.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">True courage is acting selflessly, laying down our lives, frightened as we may be, for the other.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Cowardice is not so much a lack of character as it is being overwhelmed by the interior tsunami of fear.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">We see all of that, have the chance to take in all of that and more when focused on the unfolding of Dunkirk.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">In his poem SONG OF THE INEXHAUSTIBLE SUN, St. John Paul states: Can I ever repay my gratitude to the sea whose quiet waves come out to seek me as I am led astray, day after day?</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Once you view the film the power of the Saint’s words will penetrate.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Since discussing the film after we had viewed it, and reflecting on what my son said flowing from the film, a few final points about how it is a teachable film for the current situation[s] the human family is confronting, for today in many ways we are surrounded by an unseen enemy, trapped between what was and cannot be returned to, and the far shore of where we yearn to be.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">In a real sense, like the enemy beyond the dunes of Dunkirk, North Korea and its ever more dangerous nuclear-war threat, ISIS and assorted Islamic terrorists, or wildfires smoldering deep in the forest, hurricanes forming thousands of kilometers away, what threatens us often is experienced before being seen.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">What we do see in the first instance is the violent hatred of Islamists when ordinary, innocent people, men, women, children are slaughtered in the streets; suddenly what was smouldering has become a conflagration consuming homes, businesses or destructive winds are raging, waters rising, devouring everything in their paths.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">This is when, in far greater numbers than soldiers on a Dunkirk beach, or first responders in our communities, are surpassed in number by the ordinary, yet extra-ordinary, choice of courage and selflessness of human beings who choose to lay down their lives and rescue, shelter, tend to the needs of others.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">“Action speaks louder than words” is a truism precisely because it is true.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">North Korea and Islamists spew hate and no amount of chatter will overcome such diabolical hatred.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Love is stronger – not ‘love’ words, as important as they may be – love is stronger when it is active.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Most of our heroes are hidden love actors: moms and dads caring for their children, the men and women who keep the lights on, the water drinkable, the grocery stores stocked, the streets clean, keeping vigil with the alone throughout a hospice night and countless others who only become visible when the bombs go off or vans are driven into a crowd, or flames lick at the door or the waters rise, or the call goes out for little boats to venture forth towards a far away beach.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">When stressed by wars and rumors of wars, by anything that is moving towards us as a threat, we have a choice to make: we can turn towards the dunes, behind which the enemy is advancing, unseen save for the dead and wounded around us, give into inaction, despair, or we can look towards the horizon, trusting our neighbours, our brothers and sisters are on their way to rescue us.</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">More, the critical choice for each of us to make, who are not among the wounded on whatever beach it is: will we be love in action, go forth even to laying down our lives or will we sit on our own version of Dover cliffs and just watch?</div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/PWOp9saJidk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/PWOp9saJidk/dunkirk-meditation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2017/09/dunkirk-meditation.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-5105799679382969404Wed, 16 Aug 2017 03:58:00 +00002017-08-15T22:13:13.645-06:00THE CLUTURE OF BLAMING AND DISPUTED QUESTIONS=PART 2<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; </span>CHARLOTTESVILLE: INTO THE ABYSS</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">What has happened, is happening in Charlottesville, seen repeatedly on newscasts around the globe and burning its way through Twitter is tantamount to that old saying: “Two wrongs do not make a right.”</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">More and more governments, pandering to the culture of blame, when it comes to monuments or building names, seeking to appease aggrieved groups constantly demanding a re-dress, often a re-write of history, are fuelling anger and hatred by those who feel they are endlessly blamed for the sins of past generations and see, legitimately, no end to the demands for re-dress.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Racism, hatred, these are anathema to the Gospel, contradict Christianity, have caused rivers of blood to flow, especially in the past century.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Yet there is a scary mirror image of removal of statues and place names, not just in the USA, increasingly in Canada as well, and ISIS and the Taliban blowing up, destroying monuments they deemed unacceptable to their beliefs.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">When governments, usually of the left, seek to appease the blamers by acts such as destruction of monuments, removal of names from buildings and other places you begin to wonder not only where will it end, but what about those equally guilty of historical malfeasance, whose memory the left dare not mess with?</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Such as: George Washington who was a slave owner or Louis Riel who was a rebel and a murderer?</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">We cannot change the past and whitewashing history through acts of destruction satisfies no one and only adds fuel to the fire.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Human history is complex because human beings are complex.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Seeking to re-dress, for example, events of the 19<sup>th</sup>century by applying 21<sup>st</sup> century appreciation of human rights is not only a fool’s errand and disingenuous but is the coward’s way to avoid the tough work: dialogue, with attentive respect to the notions and feelings of other and the tireless dedication to the hard work of walking together, with patience, understanding, compassion, the genuine road of reconciliation.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">When both the right and the left seek by any means to silence the other there is no dialogue, only the evil of oppression and free speech be dammed.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">When both the left and the right, in the various ways, seek to re-write or deny the rawness of history that guarantees that history will repeat itself.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Examples of the latter are the unending divisions within Christianity, the unending divide between Israelis and Palestinians, and yes, the racial divisions in the US, Canada and around the world.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">In this climate of anger and blame, of chosen deafness to the pain and confusion, the anxiety and frustration increasingly more and more people experience daily, we need to, as people of faith from every religion, pray for the grace to all take a deep breath, calm down, take a hiatus both from blaming and reflexively giving into irrational demands for a re-structuring of history.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">During the hiatus from blaming we need to, with mutual respect and attentiveness, begin to re-discovery what we, white and non-white, Catholic and non-Catholic, male and female, young and old, rich and poor, strong and weak, hopeful and discouraged have in common.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">We might begin with a few realities: we are all children of the One True God, whether we know Him or not, we all breathe the same air, we all have blood of the same colour, we all can communicate, though this latter requires a willingness, whether we like or do not agree with what we might hear, to listening without interrupting or seeking to silence other.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Unless we begin again and end this ceaselessly angry blaming, by both sides, of the other, we will rip our nations apart.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Civil wars are never civil.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">That is a misnomer.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">They are fratricide wars.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">After the bloody fratricidal wars in both England and Spain, in both cases ostensibly to remove the monarchy, both nations now have constitutional monarchs.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Clearly the fratricidal war in the US between the north and the south remains an unhealed wound.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Words of anger and hatred, of us versus them, as labels, wound hearts and invariably precede the use of weapons which wound bodies, which kill. </div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Words matter, words have power, words can be vessels of peace or vessels of war, chalices of love or goblets of hate.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">We must choose which words, what our hearts commit to, what we will work for before it is too late. </div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Like the ancient story of the blind men and the elephant, who never having encountered an elephant, when they do, each only touches a part of the beast and from that one touch assumes to have an idea of the entire creature, yet when, based on their limited experience, assert unequivocally theirs is the right description, each becomes suspect to the others who assume, since “I” am right the others must be untruthful.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">The result is they begin beating each other.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">The moral of the story is clear: as humans, we tend to assume we have the whole truth and others are ignorant of the truth because their version is not like ours.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">It is the tendency to be subjective.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">To be objective and know actual truth means having an open and listening mind and heart, attentive and welcoming of what aspects of the truth of the thing the other can offer, but which we have not yet discovered. </div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">Unless we stop blaming and screaming at each other, all of us will become blind, wandering in darkness, bumping into each other, recoiling in the utter terror of vulnerability to whomever, or whatever, shall overpower us with murderous rage, falling into the cold, dark abyss, where we will be so far removed from Christ we no longer recognize our very self, nor other as person, as my brother and sister.</div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/KX-G3AFGWrU" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/KX-G3AFGWrU/the-cluture-of-blaming-and-disputed.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2017/08/the-cluture-of-blaming-and-disputed.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-5303601599680119868Fri, 21 Jul 2017 20:58:00 +00002017-07-21T15:00:29.319-06:00CULTURE OF BLAMING AND DISPUTED QUESTIONS<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">PART 1</span><br /><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">During the traditional singing of the national anthems of Canada and the United States at the opening of baseball’s All-Star game, while singing the Canadian anthem, the singer is heard to giggle slightly.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The Twittersphere went nuts with harshness about disrespect and some even suggesting banning anthems at games.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Really?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Who among us has not giggled nervously when under stress at the worst possible moment?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">I’ll let well-funded sociology and psychology departments at universities figure when we became a culture of blaming and seemingly have forgone any capacity for compassionate understanding. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Since the so-called ‘Age of Enlightenment’ began in the 18<sup>th</sup> century, for all our progress in terms of free speech, democratic development, religious tolerance, etc., as a human community we have been on a trajectory to the proverbial ‘vanishing point’.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">No wonder the other day a young adult said to me they have no hope and see nothing but the end of all things approaching at a frightening speed.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Bloody as they were, especially the French revolution in which hundreds of non-combatants were summarily executed, and the American revolution, which had its own various acts against so-called Loyalists, many of whom fled to Canada, nonetheless it did appear for a time that democratic forms of government would prevail. However, we must keep in mind that universal franchise of the vote did not happen for almost two centuries, during which time France went through a series of upheavals, including the Bonaparte era, the Americans had a civil war, those deep wounds not totally healed in either country.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Slavery and the so-called “Indian Wars’, actual wars against the Indigenous people by the American government, one post-confederation brief rebellion in Western Canada, another not yet healed wound, by the dawning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century primarily France, Canada, Great Britain and the USA were moving towards actual democratic systems and, though not until after WWI, supported by universal franchise.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">However the profound bloodletting of two world wars, the Great Depression in between, has resulted in several paradoxes: international forms to govern world affairs, such as the UN, but it is largely ineffective because, and will remain so, five nations alone have veto power in the security council, the price for which is paid in blood by people subjected to genocide, such as in Rwanda; while Canada has very strict laws regarding boundaries for seats, known as ridings, in parliament, decided by independent commissions in each province based on population numbers after each decennial census, spending on elections is tightly controlled and financed in the main by tax payers, while individuals may contribute to a party or candidate, the amount is strictly limited: for example in the last federal election less than 2,000$, while corporations and trade unions are forbidden by law to contribute to parties or candidates.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">I mention the above against the background of the, as yet, unfinished project of maturing democratic systems.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">With extension of the vote first to non-landowning men, but well into the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century before the franchise was granted to women, and even longer before women as government leaders or ministers became the norm, democracy began spreading across the globe, after WWII, until recently. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In our day once more the powerful and elites, of both the right and the left, an ever smaller, more powerful number of people, have seized control and push their own agenda.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">No surprise then since after the US Supreme Court decision in ‘Citizens United’ money, not the voice, the votes, nor the concerns and needs of the common people, i.e. all the rest of us, has a wit to do with power, governance, elections, for when ballots are cast the outcome is virtually pre-determined because of the influence of hard, cold, cash. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">On this point, I highly recommend Jane Mayer’s seminal work DARK MONEY.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Neither major party in the last US election listened to nor heard the people. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">One man did, himself hardly the forgotten, common man, but shrewd enough to listen to and become the voice of ordinary Americans.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Brexit happened in Britain because of the same arrogant deafness and the country remains in a blaming lather with still nothing resolved.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">France has deep divisions and anger, Canada likewise, while so-called, or formerly, democratic countries, Venezuela and Turkey being just two examples, have more and more oppressive regimes and a very angry and divided populace.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The Canadian Prime Minister, frequently an immature flip-flopper, prevents passage of a bill which would have protected police officers from being slaughtered by criminals granted bail because their violent past cannot be revealed at bail hearings, participates in the relentless blaming by Indigenous people of the rest of us for all their past trauma, some of it truly horrific and needing to be addressed, but the way his government handles things is beyond rational comprehension.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Things on most reserves are ‘third world’, but no one in his government seems willing to follow the money!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">With millions upon millions poured annually into reserves over decades where has it gone? Not into adequate housing, for example and neither are governments willing to clean up the secretive way in which chiefs and councils, often with every one of the same family, are chosen.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The removal in the US of Confederate monuments, of objectionable building names or monuments in Canada because of what the colonial powers did is, frankly, revisionist history at its most grotesque and heals no one, reconciles no one.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Why?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Unless groups such as ‘Black lives matter’ or the Assembly of First Nations in Canada, and their counterparts around the world, are willing to look in the mirror, government placations are akin to the famous story of St. Augustine strolling along the shore trying to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity. Seeing a boy running between the sea and a hole dug in the sand with a shell in which he carried water, St. Augustine asked the boy what he was trying to do and the boy replied: “Put the ocean in the hole.” Augustine explained the impossibility of the task, to which the boy asserted: “I will put this ocean in this hole before you understand the mystery of the Trinity!”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Yes, black lives, but all lives, do matter, and yes injustice must be re-dressed, reconciliation worked towards, but with objective truth.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Yes, some police officers do kill minorities, but there are more, black on black murders per weekend in Chicago than police shootings, and yes Indigenous women and children should not be murdered, but excusing violence against them by their own, or ignoring it, because of past history, is disingenuous.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">A prominent Indigenous recently stated how welcoming his people were when the British and French first came. Really? How traditionally Indigenous people have always been peaceful. Really?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">So much for brushing out the wars between the tribes through millennia in North, Central, South America – much like the Jesuits did years ago at the shrine of the Canadian Martyrs, painting over beneath the clouds on which the martyrs stand, the depiction of their martyrdom.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Guess the Jesuits figure the martyrs were assumed into heaven!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">A brother priest told me of his experience as parish priest of a large reserve when the feast of the martyrs was at hand and how nervous he was about preaching on the feast. So he went and asked one of the Elders what advice she had. The wise woman took his hand, looked him straight the eye and said: “Why worry, we did them a favour!”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Indeed.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">This is truth speaking. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">We know the molten core of the earth triggers earthquakes and volcanoes, neither of which we can accurately predict, both occurring with frequent destructiveness.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Both governments and elites of the left and the right, live on top of a seething, ever more hot and angry core of forgotten men and women.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Who knows when this core will erupt or what the consequences will be.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Erupt it will.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Blaming those who never had, nor have, any responsibility for the actions of previous generations, as terrible and destructive as those actions were, has become itself a form of discrimination and oppression and contributes more and more to angry resistance as minorities, finding every newer ways to blame and re-write history and making ever more extreme demands, trigger reactions which have both sides using ever more intemperate language.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">This cycle will eventually stop reconciliation dead in its tracks.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">We cannot rationally apply to previous eras of history, and human behaviour therein, our modern understanding of our common humanity, of intrinsic human dignity and rights.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">That is a fool’s errand.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">More and more it appears minorities’ understanding of reconciliation is: gimmee, gimmee, and there is no amount of money, no number of building name changes, nor monument destructions, which will ever satisfy.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Reconciliation must be mutual, or nothing is reconciled, nor will it ever be.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Reconciliation is impossible without <u>mutual understanding, mutual forgiveness, mutual love.</u></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Currently there is within societies, both national and international, such a dearth of understanding, forgiveness and love that the volcano of violent chaos is bubbling ever closer to the surface and the whole human family is at risk.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Thus, the first disputed question is: Are we willing to embrace objective truth and move away from blaming so that both just re-dress of wrongs and reconciliation can become forward moving within the context of authentic government of, by and for the people? Are we willing to become a people of attentive listening, reconciliation without vitriolic blaming, using instead love’s maturity?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Or is the chasm between the blamers and the blamed, the blamed who did NOT enact the evils of the past, so immense that for all the shouting back and forth no sound can carry that far and so each side becomes ever more distanced from and incomprehensible to the other?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">We need to dispassionately, compassionately, find a way to bridge the chasm, find a meeting place, see each other as one like myself and begin to love one another.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Little time remains before the volcano erupts and the whole earth becomes a new Pompeii.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/cEdBlAlO9i4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/cEdBlAlO9i4/cculture-of-blaming-and-disputed.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2017/07/cculture-of-blaming-and-disputed.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-2183560172905853832Mon, 05 Jun 2017 22:54:00 +00002017-06-05T16:54:19.503-06:00new blog addedhttps://hopeforpriests.blogspot.ca/2017/06/a-chronos-zig-and-kairos-zag.html<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/LYVuZKZhbp8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/LYVuZKZhbp8/new-blog-added.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2017/06/new-blog-added.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-3161532541689003937Thu, 16 Mar 2017 21:51:00 +00002017-03-16T15:51:01.459-06:00THE UNEXPECTED JOURNEY<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Yesterday, during the prayers for the dead, a section of each Holy Mass before the Our Father, a beloved-priest monk, deceased some years ago, a dear friend, retreat-master and someone with whom I often exchanged letters filled with spiritual richness – from him I stress – came powerfully anew to my heart and I reflected with come confidence that he is face to face with the Beloved of his life.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">After Mass, however I realized I am now deep into, perhaps further along than I suspect, an unexpected journey.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">About to face, sometime in the future, as yet totally unknown to me, of not just the journey’s end, but the final stage of a battle I have been engaged in for over seventy years!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In many ways the entire journey through life, what is actually a pilgrimage to the Absolute, is, if not purely an unexpected journey, certainly a journey filled with, sometime fraught with, the unexpected.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">From the moment in chronological time the Holy Trinity breathes life into us, with the cooperative love of a man and a woman, who co-create new life with the Trinity, we have begun the journey.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The first door we pass through, the first complete stage of the journey is through the door from within our mother’s heart and womb out into the birth-reality from the, as it were, enclosed universe within her, into the ever-expanding universe from life at home, to life away from home, on a planet itself but one place within an even greater universe.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Change, movement, experience, growth, aging, joys, tears, success, failure, love, love lost, hopefully found again, the ebb and flow of friendships and perhaps encounters with enemies – yes the journey is one of constant discovery, of learning, of choosing.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">For we human beings created in the image and likeness of God with the immortal soul breathed into us, our body, with its senses, mind, will, imagination, emotions, is not the sum of being: <span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;</span>being is who we are, mindful the soul gives form to the body and the body itself is a temporary abode.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">We are in a sense nomads on the journey carrying the ‘tent’ of our bodies wherever we go.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">For us then death is but the final and greatest doorway which when passed through allows us to step into the reality of true being, into an immensity greater than the entire created universe, a place of no more tears, neediness, nor lack of love and beauty because it is our true home, which is the place of everlasting communion of love with the Holy Trinity: the real purpose of our being.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">That said these more than seventy years death and I have been in a battle wherein mostly I have used my wits and energies, and since ordained, my priestly power to frustrate death at every turn.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">I realize now that death at some point, I know not when exactly, will turn and no longer flee from me the pursuer but will come towards me and this time – though I admit as yet I lack enough faith and trust to do so – I will stop, stand, wait and, if granted the grace of absolute faith and trust, surrender to death’s embrace, confident the embrace is not my being overcome or destroyed, rather death’s embrace is actually the door being flung open!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Two passages come to mind at this juncture. The first from the Holy Gospel:</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? [cf. Mt.16:24-26]</span></b></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">And from St. Paul:</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God. He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, but now made manifest through the appearance of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. [2 Tim. 1:8-10]</span></b></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">There sure are lots of ‘heroic’ ways to deny ourselves and some are called to do so, such as those who voluntarily give up all the security of marriage, family etc., to embrace the monastic, religious, priestly life.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">However, I would argue the true heroic way is to embrace what Jesus is asking by being faithful to the duty of the moment, as moms do when their baby needs to be fed at two in the morning, as dad’s do when going to work each day, what they both do at day’s end by giving the children all the attention they need during supper and bedtime rituals. THAT is self-denial in spades! </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Self-gift to other, in marriage, parenthood, priesthood, in military service, policing, teaching, shelf-stocking in a grocery store, etc., etc. – the fullness of what Christ asks is not to be found in any particular vocation or profession, rather it is within our vocation/profession living out the simple principle: God first, the other second and I am third.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">This is also how we live out what St. Paul is asking through the strength we get from God: when it seems we are just way too fried to carry on, way too ‘giving’ empty to spare another drop, we can draw upon the strength of the very grace Jesus asked for in the Garden: “Not my will but Yours be done”, the grace of strength is the very grace we ask in the Our Father: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Again, it has taken more than seventy years of the unexpected journey for me to barely begin to embrace the above, much less live it out!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Death, in my experience through most of my life, is a sneak, a thief, arbitrary, sometimes cruel, occasionally as unexpectedly quick with the speed of a striking snake, at other times lingers for no apparent reason, and throughout human history is often in league with pandemics, warmongers and terrorists and not infrequently a co-conspirator with people who hate.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">That said my first experience of this sneakiness of death was when I was a small child just after the war, during family supper when suddenly my Grandmother moaned, clutched her chest and fell to the floor.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">She was dead.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In those days, deceased family were waked in the home and so within hours there she was in the open casket, cold, stiff to the touch and my battle with death had begun – death the sneak, death the quick, death the thief.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Within seemingly quick succession over the next couple of years my Great Uncle, who in many respects was dead in body and spirit from his First World War wounds, was gone, quickly at the end, and then my Grandfather, with him death lingered cruelly and his death filled me with both anger and a grief, I admit, which sometimes these sixty plus years later still pains.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">First in the newspapers, then in magazines, and books, in the years immediately after the Second World War, pictures of the concentration camps, and the victims of death’s abode piled like tossed debris, as well as pictures of emaciated survivors, men, women, children, were rather common both because of the Nuremburg trials, and because everyone was trying to do the impossible: understand how this could have happened.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">I remember my first perusal of a book about the camps, likely I was by then five or six and already possessed with a mind of keen observation, analysis and memory. I asked the Aunt whose home I was visiting: why the people were naked, that it was wrong for people to have their picture taken when they had no clothes on.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">She gently re-opened the book which I had slammed shut in disgust and explained things to me.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">This did two things within me: made me from then on fiercely opposed to war, discrimination, hatred and made me see death even more as the enemy.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Some years later death as the cruel co-conspirator with disease was brought home to me and seared me deeply emotionally during the polio epidemic. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Many children, including classmates, died, and an awful lot of those afflicted ended up in what were called iron lungs.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">I remember when we were given the polio vaccine after the epidemic sensing this battle death had now lost!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">When I was sixteen the seductive sneakiness of death tried to overpower me.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">I was working, having left home two years before, high in the rafters of a barn replacing the rotted boards of a catwalk and could look down from my perch, through the immense and empty hayloft, it was the beginning of summer and the cattle were on pasture, down all the way to the cement floor and this idea took hold, telling me how easy it would be just to let myself fall and then all the adolescent angst, the pain, the confusion, the disenchantment with life would be over.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">At the time, when eventually I completed the job and got down to the barn floor the normal way, by the ladders, I had no idea why I did not let myself fall, did not surrender to death.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Today I know it was grace.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Not a grace I was consciously aware of or said a clear yes to at the time, but a grace nonetheless.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The grace of the power of the constitutive passion to live placed in all of us at our creation.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In life each moment of each day is preparation for life forever with Him, if in each moment, no matter the particular pain or darkness, we choose life!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">As we know the repercussions of WWII rippled throughout the remainder of the 20<sup>th</sup> century with a seemingly endless series of civil wars and revolutions from China to Iran, extending even into the 21<sup>st</sup> century, as well what became known as proxy wars extended from Korea to<span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span>Vietnam to Afghanistan; civil rights movements and other struggles, sometimes indirectly, sometimes deliberately, increased assassinations of political and civil rights leaders, opponents of oppressive regimes; plagues from AIDS to Zika unfolded along with terrorism from the Red Brigades to Al Qaeda to ISIS, while even today famine is death’s chariot to move among whole nations.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Within such chaos comes another type of death: that of rational morality, common sense and social cohesion unravels.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">There are today, since the end of the 20<sup>th</sup>century fewer democratic governments around the world, a growing gap between rich and poor, an angry clamoring for ‘rights’, without an equal voice for personal responsibility, and finally people who actually believe and practice, for example their Catholic faith, are becoming a remnant, while others gather on the edges as either extreme fundamentalists or as cafeteria Catholics.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In religions without a solid base of central wisdom and guidance, such as Catholics have in the person of the Pope, extremists misuse sacred texts to justify their death-dealing angry illusions.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Our greatest concern should not be the debated impact on climate by human activity, rather it should be the persistent de-humanizing of the human family, a far greater and more immediate unfolding of death with the spread of abortion, euthanasia, the dismantling of the family as a sacred relationship between a man and woman and the children issued from their love.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">I will admit I went through a period overly influenced by the above matters and did not lose but decidedly rejected and walked away from Catholic faith and praxis.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">It was in the midst of those dark years, before my conversion<span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span>of return to Catholic faith and practice, that death showed me its cruelty and claim to power in the work I was doing, always I might add on the graveyard shift.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">No irony there!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">One night the homicide detectives asked everyone on that shift to find time to go to the morgue and see if we could recognize, as a person with a name, a body dragged out of the river.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Since my own duty required me, while on patrol, to answer calls across the whole city it was not until two in the morning that I had time to respond.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">There in the morgue was the body of a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, who had been severely tortured before being executed.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">I stood there, not able to make an identification, but lingering, wondering if a mother or father, a wife or children, a lover or friend was wondering where he was, what had happened to him?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">It seemed to me, as anger welled within me about the way humans cooperate with death in the brutal way this man’s life had been taken, that maybe death was too powerful, maybe I should stop trying to beat death.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Then, inside of my mind or heart or…….somehow I heard yet not hearing as in when someone else is speaking, but heard in a depth of my being I’d been ignoring for decades: “You will remember him in your first Mass and pray for his soul and he will be granted peace.”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Terrified, I fled the morgue.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Fifteen years later during my ordination Mass I remembered him, prayed for him, and continue do so each anniversary of my ordination for more than thirty years already.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">During my years serving as a parish priest, as is true for all priests, death and I met often: in hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, family homes, at scenes of highway accidents.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The prescribed prayers of the Church within the Sacrament of the Sick administered to the dying make it clear death’s victory is illusory for Christ is greater, the same within the prayers for the deceased during the wake and funeral Mass where the emphasis is that life has not ended but changed, changed because Christ IS risen!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">While intellectually I believed all the truth Jesus and the Church teach about the resurrection of the body and life forever in communion of love with the Most Holy Trinity, deep within my being there remained doubt.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Until one year when I was on sabbatical I was able to participate in a Byzantine liturgy commemorating the burial of Christ.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f"></v:shapetype></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NyeFperlVcI/WMsIgOQ24kI/AAAAAAAAAOc/0o_6FK1IFAggERMJg4QqUHtxVklu3lhhQCLcB/s1600/1280px-Theodosia_Poulopos_-_Epitaphios_-_1599.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NyeFperlVcI/WMsIgOQ24kI/AAAAAAAAAOc/0o_6FK1IFAggERMJg4QqUHtxVklu3lhhQCLcB/s320/1280px-Theodosia_Poulopos_-_Epitaphios_-_1599.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:formulas> <v:path gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect" o:extrusionok="f"> <o:lock aspectratio="t" v:ext="edit"></o:lock></v:path></v:stroke><v:shape alt="Image result for epitaphios icon" id="Picture_x0020_1" o:spid="_x0000_i1025" style="height: 159pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 246pt;" type="#_x0000_t75"> <v:imagedata o:title="Image result for epitaphios icon" src="file:///C:/Users/Robert/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg"></v:imagedata></v:shape><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Known in Greek as the Epitaphios this, and similar, cloth icons are very sacred and used throughout the extended Vespers of Good Friday.</span><br /> <br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">At the end of Vespers, as I experienced it almost twenty years ago, four acolytes held the icon high enough that, led by the bishop and priests, followed by the congregation, we processed under it, having to bend low, as if to enter the tomb in which Christ was buried.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">But unlike the enclosed tomb, we came out on the other side!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">My entire being experienced, finally without doubt or hesitation, the truth of entering death with, in, through Christ as the unexpected final steps of the journey.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" [1 Cor. 5:55]</span></b></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In the late 90’s Jean Vanier gave the lectures in the CBC Massey Lectures Series, which talks were eventually published in a book called BECOMING HUMAN: “We human beings are all fundamentally the same. We all belong to a common, broken humanity. We all have wounded, vulnerable hearts. Each one of us needs to feel appreciated and understood; we all need help.”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">That word from Jean Vanier serves me as a reminder this unexpected journey will someday be not the symbolic bending, entering, emerging from a liturgical gesture of death, burial, resurrection, but the actual entering and emerging.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Therefore I, and all the elderly, must embrace a humble willingness to risk others, the younger, stronger in particular, seeing our brokenness, woundedness, vulnerability, neediness and reach out for any help needed.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">It also means, in union with the often rejected and lonely Christ, peacefully accepting the response to our need may not be instantaneous. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">If we love those we need, then we will trust their love in return and be patient.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Jesus tells us: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come…….So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. [cf. Mt.24:42&amp;44]</b></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">However, there is no need to fear the last footsteps of the journey for Jesus promises us: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. [cf.Jn.14-16]</b></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">At journey’s end, in the most unexpected moment, we will not be alone, He will be with us.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/dwfXbTkaAGE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/dwfXbTkaAGE/the-unexpected-journey.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)1http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2017/03/the-unexpected-journey.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-6722185453371807037Tue, 21 Feb 2017 03:22:00 +00002017-02-20T20:22:17.764-07:00NOT MY PRESIDENT!<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In my plus seventy years of life I have lived under 7 Popes, 2 Monarchs, 11 Governor Generals, 14 Prime Ministers and during the same period the United States has had 14 Presidents.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Except for the Popes, the Monarchs, the Governor Generals, [the Popes we believe and trust are chosen by the Holy Spirit, the Monarchs are hereditary, the Governor Generals appointees of the reigning monarch, and like the monarch herself forbidden constitutionally to meddle in politics or be partisan], Prime Ministers and Presidents are creatures of the people.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In other words, democratically elected, of differing political persuasions and thus vulnerable in a radically different way to public opinion than those others mentioned such as popes.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">When it comes to Prime Ministers of Canada I am batting 50/50 so half the time my choice has been elected and mostly I have been pleased by how they have governed the country. With the ones, I did not vote for, including the current office holder, I have been/am, decidedly disappointed.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">However, it has never occurred to me to go around and declare that the duly elected prime minister is not mine, nor have I ever experienced tens of thousands of Canadians, from the very night of the election and continuing virtually unabated post-election, filling the streets and declaring: NOT MY PRIME MINISTER!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Feelings can/do run deep in this country when it comes to political parties, of which we have usually at least four in parliament, but there is also a deep sense that, if you will, ‘this too shall pass’, because there is always another election.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">What I, and people around the world, are observing happening in the United States is not only dangerous for the future of the republic but allows authoritarian regimes around the world, and worse terror groups, to point to the chaos and argue it reveals a fundamental weakness in democratic countries, namely that when push comes to shove the people who see themselves as on the losing side neither respect the results nor the new head of government, actually in the USA, the new head of state since both aspects are in the one presidential office.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The Second Vatican Council in its document on the Church In The Modern World stresses the need for community, participation in same, and the development of what is commonly called politics noting that the political community exists for the common good, stressing then that the resulting state/government which results itself must be directed towards the common good and that we as citizens must obey – so long as the government does not abuse its authority. [cf. op. cit. para 74]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The latter of course – abuse of authority – unless as blatant as happens in non-democratic societies – can be very subjective, hence the importance of transparency in government and of a free press and the absolute protection of freedom of speech.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Pope Francis stressed in his speech to congress during his visit to the United States that everyone in every country has a mission which is both personal and social and stressed that “A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all is members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people.” [Sep.24.15]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In many countries citizens and even legislative assemblies ever since the recent American election have been extremely vocal in their attitude towards the current President – leaving one to wonder how those people and governments would feel if Americans were trashing their head of state or government?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Human history is a long and not yet completed journey from the autocracy of tribal leaders, to kings, until finally, starting with the Magna Carter, little by little the difficult, and at times very bloody, process of representative government began to take root and still we have not achieved its full, and necessary, potential.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Unless we learn anew some basic principles of democracy and communal living we will regress, perhaps so far back truly democratic societies will if not disappear, certainly be in extreme peril.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">I will note the first principle last.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The second principle is to honour the fact everyone else has the same right to choose for whom they vote, for which party, as I do and the Golden Rule applies here. IF there are legitimate, objective concerns post an election about the way the elected are leading the country or legislating then the right to protest, sacrosanct as it is, MUST be exercised with peaceful respect and avoiding words and actions which divide rather than unite.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The third principle is to temper extremism when it comes to freedom of speech. When, be they university students or members of a political action group, make it impossible by shouting or rioting for someone or some group to speak because their ideology is objected too then those shutting down that speech are, frankly, liars when they assert belief in free speech – in truth what they mean is ‘my speech’ alone is allowed.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Such antics increase the angry division-wounds in democratic societies and if the current trend continues we will be walking ever closer to increased totalitarianism, perhaps not immediately, but inevitably, of government or certain segments of the population who are no different than those historical groups of the past who marauded by night wearing white sheets.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Here, most critically the American media, also that of other countries, not to mention the so-called social media, which as a blogger I am a tiny part of – all who use modern forms of communication need to temper adjectives and rash ad hominem statements.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Classic media – newspapers, radio, television – seem to spend less time reporting factual events and more time rounding up panels of so-called experts to blather on about the foibles and outrages of the current President, thereby exacerbating the ever deepening, and dangerous, divisions within the society which has not yet truly healed from their civil war of more than a century ago.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Those of us who use social media likewise have a common-good responsibility to fact check what we write and to assure while exercising the free speech right of dissent to do so in language that is tempered by charity.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Now the first principle: Then Jesus said to them, "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." [Mk. 12: 17]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="68002013"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;">Be subject to every human institution for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to the king as supreme</span></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="68002014"></a><span style="margin: 0px;"><sup><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"> </span></sup></span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;">or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the approval of those who do good. </span></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="68002015"></a><span style="margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;">For it is the will of God that by doing good you may silence the ignorance of foolish people. </span></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="68002016"></a><span style="margin: 0px;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;">Be free, yet without using freedom as a pretext for evil, but as slaves of God.</span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="68002017"><span style="margin: 0px;">Give honour to all, love the community, fear God, honor the king.</span></a><span style="margin: 0px;"> [1Pt.2:13-17]</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;">Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves. [Rm. 13:1,2]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/TgRizesDnkE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/TgRizesDnkE/not-my-president.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2017/02/not-my-president.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-4125437317460761589Sun, 05 Feb 2017 00:01:00 +00002017-02-04T17:11:58.229-07:00HATE MUCH?<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Several years ago news came out about the discovery of human remains at the bottom of a deep rock shaft in Spain.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Some thirty skeletons were found, with clear indications of murder.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The remains have been dated as being some 400,000 years old.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In his book, HOMO DEUS, Yuval Hararai notes that: “From the Stone Age to the age of steam, and from the Arctic to the Sahara, every person on earth knew that at any moment their neighbours might invade their territory, defeat their army, slaughter their people and occupy their land.”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Perhaps those thirty human beings, whose remains were found in Spain, died in such an invasive battle, or perhaps they simply belonged to the wrong tribe or clan or worshipped some deity not accepted by their killers.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">While certainly in the 20<sup>th</sup> century we experienced wars on a massive scale, of the type Hararai speaks of, within those wars the greatest acts of hatred-murder were committed by the Nazis in the death camps, and only since the Second World War have we discovered irrefutable evidence of other mass murders such as throughout the gulag and even more recently have we been confronted with 9/11 and every terrorist act since then.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman once noted that: “Prejudice, after all, is superior to facts, and lives in a world of its own.”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In the 4<sup>th</sup>chapter of Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel, we are confronted with the first recorded instances of self-pity, jealously, rage, fratricide, murder in Sacred Scripture.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Since God alone sees the truth within every human heart, thus the Sacred text points clearly to Cain’s heart being deeply infected with self-centered-self-pity, jealous rejection of his brother Abel. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Thus within Cain an infection spreads from the heart to the mind to angry, hate-filled murder.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Cain’s sarcastic lie, when challenged by God after the murder, about having no idea where his brother is and rejecting his responsibility as the elder brother to lovingly, protectively care for his sibling, is summarily dealt with by God who informs Can that Abel’s blood cries out from the very earth.</span></div><br /><div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister. For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.” [1Jn.3:10-12]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Recent elections, notably in the United States, but elsewhere in the world, have been marked by profound anger, divisions, violent protests and we are witnessing around the world, in democratic countries in particular, increased anger and extremism and acts of hatred against those deemed for a plethora of reasons to be, if not outright enemies, at least a threat because their economic status, colour, political position, gender, sexual orientation, religion are rejected because they are not ‘ours’!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Hate is the most insidious of diseases of the heart and like all fatal infections has two definitive aspects: 1] ultimately it kills the host and 2] is in a sense an air-borne disease spread by word of mouth.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">ISIS is nothing less than an epidemic of hate, but alt-right and alt-leftist Christians, Jews, peoples of any religion, likewise are spreaders of this same pandemic which is sickening the whole human family, weakening democracies, and may well lead to a third, and given modern weapons of mass destruction, unwinnable world war, except perhaps by the very machines, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons which will destroy us.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Words have intrinsic and extrinsic power.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Genesis repeats throughout each stage of creation, including the creation of the human person: “God said....”.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Each spoken ‘word’ results in the ‘and there was’.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;</span>The Holy Gospel, according to St. John, reminds us that in the very beginning was ‘the Word’.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The interior dialogue which stirs darkness in the human heart itself reveals the power of words.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Eventually the words spoken interiorly, churning within the ever-destructive poison of prejudice, rejection, hatred, become the emotions of anger, even murderous rage.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">It matters not a whit to the innocent victims of the murderous hate to which extremist group, or the lone-wolf, hate-filled murder[s] belongs: for they are dead, just like those found in that pit in Spain or in the mountainous debris of 9/11.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">However, it does matter much to those who survive a hate-filled attack, such as occurs all too frequently, sometimes by Islamic extremists, such as in Europe, or by rightist/leftist extremists such as occurred in the lone-wolf terrorist attack in Quebec City where Muslim men at prayer were murdered and wounded.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The interior dialogue of people who hate begins with words of self-hatred, self-rejection. </span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Sometimes this so poisons the heart that the person takes their own life, for the poison has so permeated their minds, souls, they can no longer stand the darkness and pain.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Other times the impact of the interior poisoning morphs into an extended dialogue of blaming, such as Can did of Abel, and the process begins of refusing to see other as one like myself, a human being, and constructing a list of reasons as to why they cannot possibly be one like myself, an acting person, and therefore must be a thing, an object.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Like the boiling cauldron of Shakespeare’s witches anger heats to the point of hate-filled rage and we have a 9/11, a Charlie-Hebdo, a Quebec City massacre.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Words have power.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Words are active, never passive.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Words can shred another’s dignity, hurt and shame them, reject them.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">More powerful are words which affirm, welcome, accept, love, forgive, reveal mercy and compassion.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">There was a story repeated often years ago after a pastoral visit by St. John Paul II to a country suffering under a military dictatorship which, admittedly I have not been able to verify, yet is, true or not, illustrative: The Pope was celebrating Holy Mass before tens of thousands of people in a stadium when into the crowd came soldiers, agents of the dictatorship, who began assaulting people and panic started.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The Holy Father stopped the Mass and repeated over and over in an ever-firmer voice: “Love is stronger! Love is stronger!”, until the bishops and priests, then the assembled choir joined him in repeating “Love is stronger!” Little by little those powerful three words moved through the crowd until it was the spoken word of everyone and the soldiers slinked away.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">In Auschwitz in 1941 the Nazis choose a group of men for execution by starvation when one of the men, rather young, pleaded for his life for he was a husband and father. Before the Nazis could react, a priest stepped forward and offered himself, his life, in exchange.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Miraculously his offer was accepted.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">That priest is known throughout the world as St. Maxmilian Kolbe and the young man did survive that day and the longs days after until he was among the liberated survivors.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Love IS stronger.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Each of us can, must, choose which words we speak to ourselves, and if we find we are speaking dark and hurtful words to ourselves then before the infection becomes fatal we <u>must</u> use our words with someone we trust – spouse, friend, priest, doctor – who can help us change the interior dialogue.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Each of us can, must, choose which words we speak to others, starting with those closest to us and extending outward to our neighbours and to strangers. If an understandable thing such as shyness makes it difficult for us to speak with strangers we can always use the non-verbal words of our eyes, so powerfully expressive and our smiles. Smiles, though in a sense wordless, nonetheless speak volumes of recognition that the one passing by upon whom I smile is a person like myself.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Constitutive of our humanity is the reality we are endowed with emotions/passions, which in and of themselves are neutral.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">It is the choice we make in response to their movement within us which differentiates between a choice for good or evil, virtue or vice.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Thus, an act of terrorism may well trigger intense emotions of anger, rejection towards the person[s] who commit the act.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">If we allow those emotions to remain unchecked we may well become a hater of not only the terrorist but holus-bolus of the very group, culture, religion they belong to.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">That is to choose evil, indeed to become a type of emotional terrorist ourselves.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">If we choose <u>not</u> to allow the emotion to master us, but embracing the pain and sorrow over lives lost, persons wounded, communities in upheaval, and choose to embrace, to live out the teachings of Christ then we are acting virtuously, righteously.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">We all know some, like ISIS, but also Christian and Jewish extremists, seek to justify their hatred and violence by appealing to their interpretation of sacred texts.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">This is obscene, disingenuous, insults God, and indeed rather than receive some illusory blessing here or in the hereafter, when such murderous-haters do appear before the awesome judgement seat of God, as He asked of Cain, so shall be asked of them: “Where is your brother?”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">While it should be equally self-evident for adherents of all religions, it is constitutive of Christianity, that we the baptized are not simply expected, but commanded by God, in the words of the Incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ, to love and not to hate.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;</span>“But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.” [Mt.5:22] “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,&nbsp;that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” [5:44-45]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/_2r-nEok1RU" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/_2r-nEok1RU/hate-much.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2017/02/hate-much.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-4494790278675907132Wed, 02 Nov 2016 20:24:00 +00002016-11-04T09:55:52.932-06:00THE AMERICAN ELECTION: AN EXERCISE IN SELF-MUTILATION<br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">A couple of months ago, during what seems an exhausting, stressful, never ending American election cycle, friends from the USA wrote begging prayer for their deeply troubled, self-mutilating country.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Ever since then this essay has been on and within my heart but every idea I came up with was rejected as being either finger wagging, vitriolic, smug, partisan – even though as a Canadian, obviously, I am not among the American electorate – or, I confess, pietistic.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Then unexpectedly yesterday clarity because not only the Gospel was the Beatitudes but I encountered someone who embodies the fundamental weakness both within left leaning and right leaning political parties/governments in modern democracies and why democratic governments, having caved and continuing to cave into the entitlement mindset, which poisons everyone and everything it touches, is devouring democracy as fiercely as terminal cancer devours human beings.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">I had just left the light filled, warm, joyful rectory of a brother priest where we had enjoyed cake and coffee to celebrate the parish secretary’s birthday.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Stepping out into the cold wind and heavy wet snow, I walked the couple of blocks to the bus stop, noticing as I approached a middle-aged woman, not dressed for the weather, sitting in a wheel chair.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">She motioned to me to come closer begging for money and a smoke as “It is my birthday.”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Taking care of the material request was simple but I could tell by her eyes what she truly hungered for, and so wished her a Happy Birthday and gave her a blessing.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Suddenly she was beaming and radiated with her smile gratitude she had been spoken with, seen as a real person.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">That illuminated my heart about why I see the United States in this election cycle as self-mutilating, why I am profoundly concerned this will not end on November the 8<sup>th</sup> and why I am equally concerned modern democracies are eroding from within, irrespective if the governing party be from the left or the right, and see increasing and extremely dangerous anger and ballot box – for now – rebelliousness among the populations.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The clear majority of modern democracies trace their history back to a time when the world was divided between Christendom and that part of the human family where the Gospel had yet to penetrate.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Since WWII there has been, and continues to be, a determined rejection of and assault upon all things Christian, in Europe and North America as a matter of government policy, aided and abetted by media in all its forms and the so-called intelligentsia.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Those elites have become tone deaf to the Vox Populi because such elites are incapable of authentic recognition that every human being is one like myself.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Granted, what follows right here is an over simplification, but stresses the point:<span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp; </span>for the rightist people are incapable of……..[put your own word here if you are a rightist]…………..for the leftist people don’t know that this…………..[again if a leftist insert your own label]…is best for them.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Democracy is only authentic and effective if it is centrist, via media, the middle way which, for example, neither imposes a religion NOR deliberately attacks religious belief and expression.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">It is only in the mature centre, where can be a found a balance between the Gospel of Life and the exercise of authentic freedom of choice in all matters of faith and morals [this presumes a maturity that accepts responsibility for the consequences of choosing] that the clear voice of the people, as individual persons and the communal Vox Populi can be heard and what is being said discerned and responded to.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The current election cycle in the USA, with each contender for president seemingly inexhaustible in their capacity for other bashing and lying, has a cacophony of angry voices, megaphoned by profit driven and agenda driven media on both sides, creating an atmosphere scarily reminiscent of the lead up to the original American Civil War.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">The woman, minus warm clothing, sitting in her wheelchair on a cold and wet snowy afternoon of her birthday, simply wanted to be heard, seen, recognized as a human being.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">When governments, politicians, indeed any of us, fail to see other as one like myself, fail to respond to the basic need to be recognized as, and spoken with, listened to, as a person worthy of love, dignity, irrespective of race, religion, status, political leaning, then the heart of such of our brothers and sisters is wounded ever more severely by such rejection and our failure to see them, hear them, deepens the wound.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Increasingly so wounded some retreat into despair, depression, addictions, while others become extremists of all sorts.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;">Beneath the veneer of a democratic election, and dangerously so, within the American population is an ever-increasing segment of the population alienated to a dangerously explosive juncture, not least because both political parties have chosen as candidate someone clearly unable to stop by our sister in her wheel chair and see her, hear her, speak to her love’s code word: Happy Birthday!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/Xq8wv3Nc9jg" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/Xq8wv3Nc9jg/the-american-election-exercise-in-self.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)4http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2016/11/the-american-election-exercise-in-self.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-8668486153401689554Fri, 08 Jul 2016 23:49:00 +00002016-07-08T17:49:29.411-06:00HIS BLOOD, THEIR BLOOD, OUR BLOOD<br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Until sunlight hits raindrops at the right angle the drops are translucent. A simple fact.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Once sunlight hits them at the right angle we marvel at the beauty of rainbows.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Another simple fact.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Why then do seemingly so many human beings fail to embrace the simple fact pigmentation is ONLY skin deep?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Within the external covering is the same red blood and the simple fact is that within the depth of our humanity each and every one of us IS the same colour.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Racism is a choice to be ensnared in prejudice, hatred, willful blindness as refusal to see other as one like myself.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">No one can claim to be a true Christian or Jew or Muslim, for example, if our hearts are cesspools of hate towards another human being, for to hate my brother or sister is to choose to hate God Himself who sent His only begotten Son as one like us to shed His Blood for us, to redeem us, commanding us to love one another as He loves us.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The Dallas snipers, the Orlando terrorist, the 9/11 terrorists, the Ottawa shooter/terrorist, those around the world such as ISIS and Boko Haram, are willfully blind haters.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>When they appear before the awesome judgment seat of God He will hear the voice of their brothers’ blood crying out from the earth. [cf. Gn. 4: 10,11]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The blood of every human being whether murdered by abortion, by gun, by bomb, one on one or in the darkness of concentration camps is the blood of God become man, Jesus Christ: is the blood of each one of us.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Soaking the earth over the millennia with the blood of our brothers and sisters we human beings would go insane from the unremitting screaming of the oceans of blood which have, which do, saturate the earth and unless a greater soaking had/does occur, only the crying of their blood would/will be heard by our heavenly Father.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">We would be forever imprisoned in our sin, forever without hope and this earthly existence would be cruel, pointless, devoid of hope, remaining forever unredeemed.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“As I passed by I saw you in your blood. So I said to you, ‘Let there be life out of your blood…’” [Ez. 16:6]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Who passed by?</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The same who said/says: “…..make haste, come down, for today I must stay at your house.” [Lk. 19:5] and “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him and he with Me.” [Rv. 3:20] and “This is My Blood of the new covenant which is shed for many” [Mk. 14:24] and it is said of Him: “And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became as great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” [Lk. 22:44] and “….one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear and immediately blood and water came out.” [Jn. 19:34]</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It is Jesus who passing by sees us writhing in our blood, up in the tree of our own pride, fears, sins, who knocks constantly at the door of our being that we might allow Him to enter and cleanse our hearts of all hatred and violence, who offers His own life-giving Blood to us in the Holy eucharist that mingled with our own His Blood might dominate our beings that we would love one another as He loves us from whom the earnestness and intensity of His agonizing prayer for us causes His blood to fall to the ground, also falling from His pierced side.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">His Blood seeps into the earth and mutes the cries of all the blood shed since Cain until the end of time from a cry for justice into His cry for mercy from the Father upon us, for forgiveness and the chance in each of our lives, in our communal life on this earth in each moment in Him to begin again.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">His Blood cries hope, mercy, redemption.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">St. John XXII in an Apostolic Letter from 1960 on devotion to, and confidence in, the Most Precious Blood of Jesus reminds us that: “Unlimited is the effectiveness of the God-Man’s Blood – just as unlimited as the love that impelled Him to pour it out for us….”</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Hatred breeds violence, the violent hatefully shed blood.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Love engenders understanding, compassion, clear eyes which, like raindrops kissed by the sun see the beauty of diversity knowing the essence of each raindrop is the same one to another.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">IF we allow the light of Christ, Christ Himself who shed His Blood for us, to illuminate our souls, hearts, conscience, thoughts, then we shall see each other as He and the Father sees us and we shall love one another.</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">From the litany of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus:</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Blood of Christ poured out on the Cross….price of our salvation….stream of mercy…victor over demons…help of those in peril…relief of the burdened…solace in sorrow….consolation of the dying….peace and tenderness of hearts….SAVE US!</span></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><br /></div><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><br /></div><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/OVrWAWGry3Q" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/OVrWAWGry3Q/his-blood-their-blood-our-blood.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)1http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2016/07/his-blood-their-blood-our-blood.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-6879484892372522633Tue, 17 Nov 2015 20:06:00 +00002015-11-17T13:21:13.447-07:00WHAT PARIS PROVES<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">It has been done before in New York, London, Spain, Ottawa, this evil you the haters claim to be doing in the name of, fulfilling the will of, God and in the name of a religion whose faithful adherents reject you.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">The greater rejection is the very God whose name you blaspheme by your words and actions wants nothing to do with you, He rejects you, and for a Father to reject His child means that child has closed their hearts to love, mercy and truth.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">You have always failed, will always fail.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">Yes you kill and maim but you have not and will never win.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">You seek to instill fear.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">Look around you! <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">Our reaction is to become more loving, caring, tolerant, forgiving, FREE, bolder and courageous.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">You move us to prayer, we who, unlike you, do indeed know God our Father and His holy will.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">True, we may fail, often, to be as holy as He asks us to be, but so utterly confident are we in His merciful love we can always repent, and do, try again, and do.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">You will always fail because He asks of every human being to love our enemies, to do good to those who persecute us, and we do love and we do forgive, but our love and forgiveness also gives us that strength to fight, and we are mighty warriors through our military, and you will loose.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">Love is stronger than death and hate, for love is life and truth.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">We Christians allow that Christians worship in various ways in different denominations, and that’s okay, we love one another, respect each other. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">You, so filled with hate, so filled with darkness, are blind to the dignity and beauty of all other human beings because you have chosen to hand your souls over to the prince of darkness, the blinder of souls.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">You claim to be on a mission to impose – yes impose for your greater fear is the God-given freedom of human beings – yes impose what you claim is His law, but His law is that we love and care for one another.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">It is satan’s kingdom of hate and death and no other you are imposing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">You do not know, nor us, nor your very selves.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">If you knew you are human you would know Him and would drop your weapons, forego your hate, rush to Bethlehem, and adore Him who comes among us as a baby, a child, as every human being starts life – for He is truly God and truly one of us, Prince of Peace, the all-merciful.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">He would smile upon you, forgive you, ask you to become lovers and agents of peace.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">We know Him and His love, which is why you can never overcome us for we are His.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">We see Him and love Him in every other human being. He comes disguised sometimes as a prostitute or homeless person, as a Jew or Buddhist, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>as male or female, elderly or young, hungry or thirsty and every way we welcome another human being and care for them we are touching and being touched by Him, disguised as He may be.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">Thus we cannot, will not ever hate you: so when you claim we do once more you are deluded and liars.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">Give it up. Your hatred is pointless and is dragging you into hell.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">We will pray He be merciful to you and likely this will anger you too.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">Nothing is sadder than seeing human beings choosing to be forever wandering the endless deserts of hatred and darkness.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">Come, meet the Holy Child, let Him love you, let His radiant light free you from eternal darkness.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: &quot;calibri&quot;;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/OSteqUu9XEs" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/OSteqUu9XEs/what-paris-proves.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2015/11/what-paris-proves.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-492577140059797267Sat, 17 Oct 2015 00:36:00 +00002015-10-16T18:36:13.634-06:00LAUDATO SI': A COMMENTARY<br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MSGA5jBtaq0/TRZMA8iDmGI/AAAAAAAAAGo/JkJ1VtUjV-Q/s1600/angels-announce-birth-of-jesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MSGA5jBtaq0/TRZMA8iDmGI/AAAAAAAAAGo/JkJ1VtUjV-Q/s320/angels-announce-birth-of-jesus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>PART 2<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”. </span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[para.120]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Frankly it is beyond dumb to advocate saving rain forests if we continue to murder the unborn children in the millions as we do each year.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Rachel Carson’s famous SILENT SPRING, may well come to pass because within the saved rain forests no sound of a human voice, to replace the absent birdsongs of evening, will be heard either.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The primary target of the culture of death is no whale nor tree, but specific individual pre-born human beings or human beings deemed, because of perpetual disability or so-called terminal illness become targets for those advocating euthanasia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">There is a 1990 essay from Walker Percy, published in the collection SIGNPOSTS IN A STRANGE LAND, Percy notes that: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation on earth. Now euthanasia is beginning….<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Pope Francis: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Human ecology… implies another profound reality: the relationship between human life and the moral law, which is inscribed in our nature and is necessary for the creation of a more dignified environment. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of an “ecology of man”, based on the fact that “man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will”. It is enough to recognize that our body itself establishes us in a direct relationship with the environment and with other living beings. The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation. Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to</b> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek “to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it”. </b>[para.155]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In a lecture given at Cornell in 1985, Walker Percy has this to say, as quoted also in the book: SIGNPOSTS IN A STRANGE LAND: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Every age, we know, is informed by a particular belief or myth or worldview shared in common by the denizens of the age…..the consciousness of Western man, the layman in particular, has been transformed by a curious misapprehension of the scientific method….It….takes the form of a radical and paradoxical loss of sovereignty by the layman and of a radical impoverishment of human relations – paradoxical I say, because it occurs in the very face of his technological mastery of the world and his richness as a consumer of the world’s goods. </b>[op.cit.p.210]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Ever since Adam and Eve fundamentally betrayed each other with the blame game and denial around their mutual act of disobedience, stress and conflict became part of the most sacred vocation of marriage; once Cain slew Abel, jealously, hatred, poor self-image, violence, murder seeped into family life, and so on throughout the entire Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, everything we contend with in daily personal, family, communal, body politic, religion, global relationships is all there, right in our face, all the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Only if we are steeped in the Gospel, live the Gospel with our lives without compromise, in a word follow Jesus and do as Jesus would have us do, is there any hope of our rediscovering and reclaiming personal, familial, communal sovereignty.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The prime purpose of business, of labour unions, of government at all levels, of common law, constitutional law is to form community. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">NOT communities but community.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This community, this one global family, this great tree if you will of humanity, will by its very nature have branches:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>not every family member <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>sings the same, dances the same, prays the same yet, please God, everyone WILL know that they are, we are, one family, a <u>common-unity</u>: community.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The global anxiety, restlessness, estrangement from other which nations experience daily, as do workers in the same office, on the same factory floor, students in the same university class, people in the very same pew in church, comes from the loss of sovereignty living in a world dominated by science and technology, relativistic mind sets in universities and the media, and an increasing xenophobic furtive glancing at other, be they living down the street or across an ocean.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">We live in fear.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">We are right to be afraid.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But we fear the wrong things.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">We fear the vagaries of the economy, terrorists, climate change, self-serving politicians, being labelled by those whose disdain for people of faith cloaks an overall disdain for human beings in general.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">We refuse to embrace the only fear we should have, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit and without embracing His gift, without living in the light of His gift, none of what Pope Francis is asking of us: to be converted, to love one another, to live as one human family and care for our common home, will ever come to pass and those other fears will drive us, lemming like, over the cliff into the abyss of oblivion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Archbishop Luis Martinez in his book THE SANCTIFIER teaches: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">There is fear…that is called filial…This is the gift of fear which is directed by the Holy Spirit…It is a filial fear, a noble fear, born from the very heart of love…the beginning of wisdom, because, in order to possess divine wisdom, we need to unite ourselves so closely to God that nothing can separate us from Him. The gift of fear unites us with God in this way. It hinders us from ever separating ourselves from the Beloved….</b>[op.cit.pp.130/131]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In our over medicated, so-called politically correct, relativist society the most common neurosis is chronic anxiety, in a word we are running scared because we lack a proper openness to another gift of the Holy Spirit: understanding.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This refusal to understand, and accept, the truth we are creatures – albeit endowed with immortal souls as children of the Divine – who are called to live and move and have our being in Him who created us, Love Himself, to be His beloved – this refusal imprisons us in bondage to ignorance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Everything in the cosmos, every cloud, breeze, raindrop, snowflake, every blade of grass, tree, creature of the plains, the forests, the seas and most especially every other human being testifies we have originated in the creative act of love by Someone:<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament shows the creation of His hands. Day to day utters speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voices are not heard. Their proclamation went forth into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world……The fear of the Lord is pure, enduing unto ages of ages…</span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[Ps. 18(19)vs. 1-5 &amp; 10]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Our pilgrimage through life is the opportunity to be in right relationship with Him, with self, with other[s] hence the true antidote to anxiety, restlessness, and discombulation in life is this holy, filial fear, loving awe and communion of love with Him.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This pervasive anxiety and fearful restlessness, this daily discombulation erodes the moral fibre of our lives, increases self-centeredness and deafens us to the cries of our suffering brothers and sisters, blinds us to the conditions in which millions are forced to live.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Thus Pope Francis cries out: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Our difficulty in taking up this challenge seriously has much to do with an ethical and cultural decline which has accompanied the deterioration of the environment. Men and women of our postmodern world run the risk of rampant individualism, and many problems of society are connected with today’s self-centred culture of instant gratification. We see this in the crisis of family and social ties and the difficulties of recognizing the other. Parents can be prone to impulsive and wasteful consumption, which then affects their children who find it increasingly difficult to acquire a home of their own and build a family. Furthermore, our inability to think seriously about future generations is linked to our inability to broaden the scope of our present interests and to give consideration to those who remain excluded from development. Let us not only keep the poor of the future in mind, but also today’s poor, whose life on this earth is brief and who cannot keep on waiting. Hence, “in addition to a fairer sense of intergenerational solidarity there is also an urgent moral need for a renewed sense of intragenerational solidarity”.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_ftnref125"> </a></b></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _ftnref125;"></span><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html#_ftn125"><span style="mso-bookmark: _ftnref125;"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[</span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _ftnref125;"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">para. 162</span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _ftnref125;"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">]</span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _ftnref125;"></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">If we look at recorded human history what is striking is how rarely do human beings consider the impact of choices and actions much longer than a few days ahead, indeed frequently rarely beyond the immediate moment! <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Yet choices and actions have real consequences for ourselves, those we are in relationship with, whatever our state in life, and even greater are those of nations upon human beings within and beyond our borders.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">When we make career choices/vocation choices, such as when we proclaim ‘I do.’, during sacramental marriage or ‘Here I am.’, during ordination, as but two examples, no one can see far enough in the future to foresee what the challenges of living out commitment will entail.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Thus our yes to other, to vocation, needs be renewed daily.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">However, as Pope Francis is stressing, we do have a certain capacity to see and understand the impact of some choices in life.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A simple example: if we disregard others, indeed our own welfare, and drive drunk there is a extremely high probability we will crash into another car and injure or kill, possibly self, certainly others.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In a sense we ‘drive’ economy, politics, culture, environment, among others, by our choices and actions today and Pope Francis is asking us when making decisions to look beyond the self, beyond the narrow confines of our own nation, city, etc., and to consider the impact on our brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world today – but not only today, the impact tomorrow and all remaining tomorrows of human history.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Gospel intends us to attain to true simplicity: simplicity in the sense of an inward unity of life. Such simplicity contrasts, in the first place, with the disunity of in the soul of those who lives are filled, now by one thing, now by another; who lose themselves in the motley variegation of life, who do not seek for an integration of their actions and conduct by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one</i></span></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span></i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">dominate principle. </span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[ from Dietrich von Hildebrand’s TRANSFORMATION IN CHRIST]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">What is the one dominate principle we should live by?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This in My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. </span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[Jn. 15.12]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Only if we live by the above dominate principle will we be able to take to heart, to implement in our daily lives and relations with others the urgent appeal by Pope Francis: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">…..our planet is a homeland…humanity is one people living in a common home. An interdependent world not only makes us more conscious of the negative effects of certain lifestyles and models of production and consumption which affect us all; more importantly, it motivates us to ensure that solutions are proposed from a global perspective, and not simply to defend the interests of a few countries. Interdependence obliges us to think of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one world with a common plan. </i></b>[para. 164]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In the section where Pope Francis tackles the issues of governance and political and other choices about facing the challenges in our care for our ‘common home’ he states<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">: A politics concerned with immediate results, supported by consumerist sectors of the population, is driven to produce short-term growth. In response to electoral interests, governments are reluctant to upset the public with measures which could affect the level of consumption or create risks for foreign investment. The myopia of power politics delays the inclusion of a far-sighted environmental agenda within the overall agenda of governments. Thus we forget th<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_ftnref130">at “time is greater than space”</a>.... that we are always more effective when we generate processes rather than holding on to positions of power. True statecraft is manifest when, in difficult times, we uphold high principles and think of the long-term common good. Political powers do not find it easy to assume this duty in the work of nation-building. </b>[para. 178]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The oft quoted in literature and song, often used in funerals oddly enough, words from Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 is a powerful statement about the mystery, indeed the grace of time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Each of us is given the optimum allotment of time necessary for us to become saints, to live out our vocation in life, both the general vocation of all human beings to at least live faithfully according to natural law with charity towards all others, and for the baptized to live out our primary vocation to preach the Gospel with out lives without compromise, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>within the sacredness of the particular vocation to Holy Marriage, Priesthood, Religious Life or the hidden but equally powerful vocation as a consecrated single person.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The teaching on time begins: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">To everything there is a season, and time for every matter under heaven. </b>[Ecc.3:1] and there follows the long list of just what there is time for: birth, death, sowing, harvesting – all the way down to: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace. </b>[v.8]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Obviously there are times we should not make use of such as to kill or hate. The permissive will of God may allow time for evil but we should reject using time that way and always choose to protect and love.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Truly that is time well spent!<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Time is ours to use well, or to waste.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Time is fast paced as we all know.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A moment is just that, a moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As the saying goes: use it or loose it!<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Reminding us that the fullness of time is actually eternity St. John Paul in TERTIO MILLENNIO ADVENIENTE para.10, teaches: ….<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Christ is the Lord of time; </i>He is its beginning and its end; every year, every day and every moment are embraced by His Incarnation and Resurrection, and thus become part of the “fullness of time.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">What strikes me within the teaching of Pope Francis is it moves me to look at just how environmentalists, for example, have been using time in recent decades, along with governments, enormous amounts of time spent on conferences about how things are and what we ought to do, on projecting this or that reduction of pollutants etc., etc., and in all this time it sure seems all that conferences and governments do is all agree things are rather awful and then they push the goal posts further away.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Makes one want to scream: STOP! – and to pose the question: How about taking the time NOT to jet around the world to another conference but to walk along a river bank and clean it up?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Just seems we are blathering time away to the point of catastrophe rather than being humble enough to stop, look closely at the place in time we live and what little thing can be done to repair our common home right here, right now.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">To borrow from Ed Sheeran’s powerful song for the film THE HOBBIT THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG: “I SEE FIRE”, a song which is truly a lament: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">….<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Prepare as we will <o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Watch the flames burn auburn on <o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The mountain side<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Desolation comes upon the sky…..<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">….I see fire<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Hollowing souls….<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I hear my people screaming out…..<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The overriding lesson, there for all to see and act upon or not, in the LORD OF THE RINGS and HOBBIT books and films is a stark one, echoed in the song above and stated clearly in this encyclical: when we are in bondage to self interest our hearts become cold and hard, our ears deaf to “my people screaming out.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">We are fickle.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">After years of our brothers and sisters being brutalized in Syria, Nigeria and other places suddenly one photo – it should be noted not the first such photo – of a drowned child has the world in guilty uproar.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">What about the screams of the unborn being aborted, of women and children in our own neighbourhoods being abused,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>the often muted cries of the homeless, etc., etc.?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Time is short.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Evil triumphs when good people are deaf and, frankly, lazy in the face of cruelty and injustice.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">We will never heal the environmental wounds of our common home so long as our hearts are not healed and our ears not open to our screaming brothers and sisters exhausted and hopeless in their immediate pain.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">These days to waste time that should be spent protecting the unborn, helping the expectant mother, feeding the hungry, and yes caring for migrants and refugees, as our priority, our first step towards caring for our common home – such waste is evil and in the end one wonders who will there be to live in the common home?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">To borrow from the artist Enya from her poem-song ONLY TIME:<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Who can say where the road goes<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Where the day flows, only time<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">And who can say if your love grows<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As your heart chose, only time.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Because time is God’s gift to us it is we who determine what time ‘says’ by how we use the time allotted to us.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Abortion, hatred, terrorism, extremism, displacement of innocent people, growing unemployment and resulting domestic stress, self-centeredness and innumerable other things which so hurt human beings, all these we can and must take the time to face and work towards overcoming and healing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Only then will we be able to truly care for our common home because we will make those who live within our common home our first priority, something Pope Francis clearly understands.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The two are interconnected at their core: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The majority of people living on our planet profess to be believers. This should spur religions to dialogue among themselves for the sake of protecting nature, defending the poor, and building networks of respect and fraternity. </b>[para. 201]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Many things have to change course, but it is we human beings above all who need to change. We lack an awareness of our common origin, of our mutual belonging, and of a future to be shared with everyone. This basic awareness would enable the development of new convictions, attitudes and forms of life. A great cultural, spiritual and educational challenge stands before us, and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal.</span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> [para. 202]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Yet all is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start, despite their mental and social conditioning. </span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[para.205]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">…..In the face of the so-called culture of death, the family is the heart of the culture of life”…. we also need the personal qualities of self-control and willingness to learn from one another….since the teachings of the Gospel have direct consequences for our way of thinking, feeling and living…..Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience….. In calling to mind the figure of Saint Francis of Assisi, we come to realize that a healthy relationship with creation is one dimension of overall personal conversion, which entails the recognition of our errors, sins, faults and failures, and leads to heartfelt repentance and desire to change. </span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[cf. paras. 213 to 218]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The ‘personal conversion’ urged is not an intellectual exercise, though likely there will be a degree of learning, reflection, even study to enable a change of intellectual assessment of things.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">However true conversion is, literally, conversion of heart, as Pope Francis stresses: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">We are speaking of an attitude of the heart, one which approaches life with serene attentiveness, which is capable of being fully present to someone without thinking of what comes next, which accepts each moment as a gift from God to be lived to the full. Jesus taught us this attitude when he invited us to contemplate the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, or when seeing the rich young man and knowing his restlessness, “he looked at him with love” (<i>Mk</i> 10:21). He was completely present to everyone and to everything, and in this way he showed us the way to overcome that unhealthy anxiety which makes us superficial, aggressive and compulsive consumers. </b>[para. 226]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A few days ago I went to the local shoe repair shop in the nearby mall. I had not been there before but I needed to replace my belt which was worn to the breaking point. I picked out a simple black leather belt and went to pay for it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">While making change for me the cobbler, a man elderly like myself, uninvited I should stress, leapt into a tirade against certain groups of human beings that caused me to feel I was in the presence of if not an actual Nazis certainly someone filled with the same hatred.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So long as human hearts are polluted with hatred, discrimination, violence no amount of effort, policies, laws, etc., can possibly impact damage done to our common home through polluting air, water, earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Love alone is stronger than hate and death.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A pure heart alone is strong enough to restore right balance and order between earth, air, water, other creatures and one another as persons.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Thus Pope Francis notes<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">: Care for nature is part of a lifestyle which includes the capacity for living together and communion. Jesus reminded us that we have God as our common Father and that this makes us brothers and sisters. Fraternal love can only be gratuitous; it can never be a means of repaying others for what they have done or will do for us. That is why it is possible to love our enemies. This same gratuitousness inspires us to love and accept the wind, the sun and the clouds, even though we cannot control them. In this sense, we can speak of a “universal fraternity”. </b>[para. 228] <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it. </b>[para. 229]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The priority of the human person is and must always be the foundational stance in any discussion of the environment, indeed of economics, politics, and all aspects of shared life on/in our common home and Pope Francis consistently connects the Divine, the natural, the human: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dew<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_ftnref159">drop, in a poor person’s face.</a> The ideal is not only to pass from the exterior to the interior to discover the action of God in the soul, but also to discover God in all things.</b> [para. 233]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Manifestations of God’s actions in the material world, and consequently in human souls who are open to His loving and sanctifying action, can be contemplated within the reality of matter:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>a human being, water, and oil as sacred Chrism, in Baptism and Confirmation,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>bread and wine in Holy Eucharist, blessed oil in the Anointing of the Sick, a baptized, confirmed man, Sacred Chrism in ordination in Persona Christi, a baptized man and a baptized woman in Holy Marriage and a human being in sacramental confession – these are the external elements, matter if you will, necessary for sacraments which become real and sanctifying, effective by the action of the Holy Spirit: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Sacraments are a privileged way in which nature is taken up by God to become a means of mediating supernatural life. Through our worship of God, we are invited to embrace the world on a different plane. Water, oil, fire and colours are taken up in all their symbolic power and incorporated in our act of praise. The hand that blesses is an instrument of God’s love and a reflection of the closeness of Jesus Christ, who came to accompany us on the journey of life. Water poured over the body of a child in Baptism is a sign of new life. Encountering God does not mean fleeing from this world or turning our back on nature….For Christians, all the creatures of the material universe find their true meaning in the incarnate Word, for the Son of God has incorporated in his person part of the material world, planting in it a seed of definitive transformation. “Christianity does not reject matter. Rather, bodiliness is considered in all its value in the liturgical act, whereby the human body is disclosed in its inner nature as a temple of the Holy Spirit and is united with the Lord Jesus, who himself took a body for the world’s salvation”. </b>[para. 235]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It is striking, when the Holy Father speaks about the Holy Eucharist, if we take the time to step back and reflect, the extent of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>divine and human activity necessary for the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and reception of Holy Communion: a farmer must prepare a field, plant the seed, harvest the wheat which the labour of others gets to the mill, grinds into flour, bakes and shapes while still others labour to produce the linens, vestments, liturgical books, candles, paten, a priest is needed, altar servers and readers and, critical, the active participation in the liturgy of the communicants.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This whole process of divine and human activity the Church recognizes in prayer at the Offering of the Gifts in Holy Mass: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Blessed are You, Lord God of all creation, for through Your goodness we have received the bread we offer You: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life. </b>[Roman ritual]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Pope Francis reminds us: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">It is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation. Grace, which tends to manifest itself tangibly, found unsurpassable expression when God himself became man and gave himself as food for his creatures. The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter. He comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours. In the Eucharist, fullness is already achieved; it is the living centre of the universe, the overflowing core of love and of inexhaustible life. Joined to the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God. Indeed the Eucharist is itself an act of cosmic love: “Yes, cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebr<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_ftnref166">ated on the altar of the world”</a>… The Eucharist joins heaven and earth; it embraces and penetrates all creation. The world which came forth from God’s hands returns to him in blessed and undivided adoration: in the bread of the Eucharist, “creation is projected towards divinization, towards the holy wedding feast, towards unification wit<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_ftnref167">h the Creator himself”</a>....Thus, the Eucharist is also a source of light and motivation for our concerns for the environment, directing us to be stewards of all creation. </b>[para. 236]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Again I am struck that fundamentally the heart of this papal teaching about our common home and call for better care of our common home is his recurring emphasis on the ecology of the human heart, of profound priority for respect for human life, of care for the vulnerable pre-born child, the poor, the hungry and thirsty among us, also a constant reminder to all of us that neither we nor the earth nor anything in the cosmos is self created: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Father is the ultimate source of everything, the loving and self-communicating foundation of all that exists. The Son, his reflection, through whom all things were created, united himself to this earth when he was formed in the womb of Mary. The Spirit, infinite bond of love, is intimately present at the very heart of the universe, inspiring and bringing new pathways. The world was created by the three Persons acting as a single divine principle, but each one of them performed this common work in accordance with his own personal property. Consequently, “when we contemplate with wonder the universe in all its grandeur and beauty, we must praise the whole Trinity”. </b>[para. 238] <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">While reflecting upon this encyclical I have been reading Harper Lee’s novel GO SET A WATCHMAN, which led me to re-meditate upon the scripture source of the novel’s title which is drawn from Isaiah 21:6: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">For thus the Lord said to me: “Go set a watchman for yourself and declare whatever you see.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">When cities were walled and gated, such as Jerusalem at the time of Christ, a large part of the effectiveness of such a defence depended upon the eagle eyes of the watchmen, usually stationed in high towers or along the ramparts.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In a sense Pope Francis is acting as a watchman for the whole human family, calling out as warning what he sees as the approaching enemy, if you will, when it comes not only to the environment but to the whole economic, moral and social order of the human family. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">While the Holy Father is in a unique position to be such a watchman every human being should be a watchman, especially the baptized being watchful as St. Peter urges: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith. </b>[1 Peter 5: 8-9]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Many communities have groups such as neighbourhood or rural watch, while many postal carriers, for example, are aware of the elderly and watch out for them especially in times of extreme heat or cold. In a sense the meteorologists, more commonly known as the weather forecasters on television, also stand watch as do our military and police.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Each of us should ask ourselves how we stand watch not only over our common home but especially over one another with true charity and compassion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As God asked of Cain so He asks each one of us where is your brother, your sister? In all of Sacred Scripture there is only one detailed account of the Last Judgement and it is all about how we loved, watched out for one another by the way we care for, or not, for each other. [cf. Mt. 25:31-46]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I am reminded of the words from Walt Kelly, placed in the mouth of his character Pogo, from the comic strip of the same name, and used on an Earth Day Poster in in 1970: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“We have met the enemy and he is us.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">When we fail to watch out for, to care for one another, to stand for life, truth, charity, compassion, justice, we become disconnected from one another and society becomes riven with discrimination, anger, despair and people living in such turbulence become disconnected as well from our very selves, bent towards ourselves in an egotistical, darkening mood which leads to the kind of greed that has no respect for human life or any other creature and our communion with God frays and eventually ruptures completely.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It is then we discover what true loneliness is.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Father is the ultimate source of everything, the loving and self-communicating foundation of all that exists. The Son, his reflection, through whom all things were created, united himself to this earth when he was formed in the womb of Mary. The Spirit, infinite bond of love, is intimately present at the very heart of the universe, inspiring and bringing new pathways.</span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> [para. 238] <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The divine Persons are subsistent relations, and the world, created according to the divine model, is a web of relationships. Creatures tend towards God, and in turn it is proper to every living being to tend towards other things, so that throughout the universe we can find any number of constant and secretly interwoven relationships. This leads us not only to marvel at the manifold connections existing among creatures, but also to discover a key to our own fulfilment. The human person grows more, matures more and is sanctified more to the extent that he or she enters into relationships, going out from themselves to live in communion with God, with others and with all creatures. In this way, they make their own that Trinitarian dynamism which God imprinted in them when they were created. Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity. </b>[para. 240]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Pope Francis in chapter IX, the final section of the encyclical uses the expression <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">BEYOND THE SUN</b> as its title.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It is very evocative and hearkens back to a time when, we were not hampered in our ability to be awed by the beauty of sunrise and sunset by having discovered it is not the sun which moves up and down but the earth itself. On the other hand the knowledge that our common home is in motion has led some to refer to it as ‘spaceship earth’! Not such a bad expression when you think about it for a ship is a type of home both for passengers and crew, humanity is renewed after the flood by those who had been kept safe in the ‘ship’ of Noah, when the little ship of the apostles was about to be overwhelmed by the sudden storm on the sea Jesus calmed the wind and the waves and the Church is still referred to as the bark of Peter:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">At the end, we will find ourselves face to face with the infinite beauty of God (cf. <i>1 Cor</i> 13:12), and be able to read with admiration and happiness the mystery of the universe, which with us will share in unending plenitude. Even now we are journeying towards the sabbath of eternity, the new Jerusalem, towards our common home in heaven. Jesus says: “I make all things new” (<i>Rev </i>21:5). Eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place and have something to give those poor men and women who will have been liberated once and for all. In the meantime, we come together to take charge of this home which has been entrusted to us, knowing that all the good which exists here will be taken up into the heavenly feast. In union with all creatures, we journey through this land seeking God, for “if the world has a beginning and if it has been created, we must enquire who gave it this begi<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_ftnref172">nning, and who was its Creator”.</a> Let us sing as we go. May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope. God, who calls us to generous commitment and to give him our all, offers us the light and the strength needed to continue on our way. In the heart of this world, the Lord of life, who loves us so much, is always present. He does not abandon us, he does not leave us alone, for he has united himself definitively to our earth, and his love constantly impels us to find new ways forward. <i>Praise be to him</i>! </b>[paras. 243-45]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">May we all take to heart the fundamental call from Pope Francis to be converted, to love each other as Christ loves us in the right order of fullness of human life: God first, next my brother/my sister, and I am third. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">From such love and humility will come the triumph of the Gospel of life and when the ecology of the human heart is in right order the way we interact with the natural environment of our common home will be transformed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/Gx_k9q-Akc0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/Gx_k9q-Akc0/laudato-si-commentary_16.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2015/10/laudato-si-commentary_16.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-7280588962604739440Thu, 15 Oct 2015 22:37:00 +00002015-10-15T16:37:35.700-06:00LAUDATO SI': A COMMENTARY<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MSGA5jBtaq0/TRZMA8iDmGI/AAAAAAAAAGo/JkJ1VtUjV-Q/s1600/angels-announce-birth-of-jesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MSGA5jBtaq0/TRZMA8iDmGI/AAAAAAAAAGo/JkJ1VtUjV-Q/s320/angels-announce-birth-of-jesus.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>PART 1<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">WHEN Pope Francis released his encyclical in June of this year the media stressed it was another example of this Pope’s being in line with the popular mood around the issues of the day and went all gaga over it for a few days.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then the encyclical sank from the media like a stone dropped into a still lake, the ripples visible briefly and the surface of the lake returns to its placid normality, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>with nary a sign remaining that a stone had been dropped into the lake.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Not only has the secular media’s interpretation of the encyclical proven to be self-serving, it also misses the point.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Hopefully this commentary will show that while Pope Francis is teaching <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“on care for our common home”,</b> he is teaching first and foremost about the ecology of the human heart as foundation to addressing the environmental challenges faced by the entire human family. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The title of the encyclical comes from a canticle of St. Francis praising the Lord through all aspects of this planet earth on which we live [para.1] and the Holy Father speaks of the earth crying because of what we have done/do [para. 2] yet immediately the Holy Father stresses all is a matter of what is within and flows from the human heart: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. </span></b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">[para. 2]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Echoing St. John XXIII, who addressed his seminal encyclical PACEM IN TERRIS to “all men of good will”, [para. 3] Pope Francis enunciates his desire to: …. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">address every person living on this planet……to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.</b>[para.3]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is striking for two reasons in particular: 1] He is reaffirming his role as shepherd and father of every human being, not just Catholics and 2] Dialogue means there is something important to discuss because the search for truth, identification of issues, discovery of solutions means, in this context especially, neither side of the issue can claim definitively to have the answers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">The destruction of the human environment is extremely serious, not only because God has entrusted the world to us men and women, but because human life is itself a gift which must be defended from various forms of debasement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span></b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">[para.5]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Implicit in this teaching is a challenge to those who put saving forests or whales ahead of saving pre-born children from being murdered in the womb, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>and to those who, on the other hand, while seeking to protect pre-born children often lack compassion in their hearts for those who have committed or advocate for abortion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Often this latter group denies any human responsibility for the wounding of the earth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pope Francis leaves little wiggle room in his moral challenges throughout the encyclical.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is not a matter of the Holy Father saying we must all be totally pro the global warming side. He is stressing we MUST all be pro EVERYONE and everything God has gifted to us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Perhaps we cannot directly do anything, for example, to prevent a child being murdered in the womb, but we can each day in our hearts adopt and pray for the protection of every child at risk; perhaps we cannot directly do anything about the condition, for example, of the world’s oceans but we can recycle.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If we focus, without taking concrete action, over how many millions of children are aborted or likewise without concrete action over the condition of the oceans, the sheer magnitude of evil will overwhelm and discourage us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For thirty of His thirty-three years on earth Christ did ordinary little things each day, like every human being. He did them exceedingly well. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We need humble confidence in the powerful impact of little things done well, the accumulation of which – imagine if all seven billion of us smiled at each other, a little thing, each day – will transform human life and the environment.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That like his namesake Pope Francis is a human being of love, hope, joy shines through in simple, clear teaching such as: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise. </b>[para. 12]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then Pope Francis articulates his appeal to the whole human family:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change. The Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home. </b>[para.13]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Among other serious challenges, which must be confronted, if we are to respond in the affirmative to the Holy Father’s appeal, are those of global terrorism, rooted in irrational hatreds, and the chaotic fragility of the global economy, both issues which relentlessly increase the numbers of displaced people throughout the world.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the universal sense the earth is our ‘common home’, but for millions of our brothers and sisters, those in refugee camps, the homeless and others, they literally have no home. Jesus Himself intimately in His public life took upon Himself, into His Heart, this stark reality which is the daily life of millions: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. </b>[cf. Mt. 8:19-22; Lk. 9:58 ff.]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pope Francis, reflecting on “what is happening to our common home” stresses: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it. </b>[para.19]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">One dimension of this is opening our consciousness, our hearts, to a degree of authentic intimacy, with every human being, especially the poor and vulnerable, which should include also a type of intimacy with all creation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We tend, mainly, to be somewhat unconsciously aware of the sun, moon, stars [if we can see the stars at night for artificial light in urban areas is so ‘polluting’ the sheer wonderment of the night sky is not visible in all its splendour]; likewise the immense extent of concrete and asphalt in our cities, the density of high rise buildings separates most of us from access to soft earth underfoot, to the wonders of dense forest populated by creatures of the forest.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Metropolises of more than a million, to several millions are commonplace in our era.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The state of the world’s oceans is rather a remote fact for those living in such density in modern cities.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Violence, vermin, garbage, loneliness, these are the immediate ‘environmental’ stresses experienced day in and day out by our brothers and sisters in the millions, in particular the homeless.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is central to our opening our hearts to becoming “…painfully aware…”, and throughout the encyclical Pope Francis interweaves his concerns about the environment <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>and his passionate concern for and love of the poor, a concern and love ever since his election he has ceaselessly challenged us all to embrace and respond to.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Thus, for example, when speaking about drinking water Pope Francis, after reminding us that access to safe drinking water is a foundational and universal human right adds<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">: Our world has a grave social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water, because <i>they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dignity</i>. This debt can be paid partly by an increase in funding to provide clean water and sanitary services among the poor. But water continues to be wasted, not only in the developed world but also in developing countries which possess it in abundance. This shows that the problem of water is partly an educational and cultural issue, since there is little awareness of the seriousness of such behaviour within a context of great inequality. </b>[para. 30]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Here again is a place where we who cannot do the macro, directly supply water to those who have none, can do the micro, namely take a serious, objective inventory of our personal water use/waste.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Throughout the encyclical Pope Francis issues stark warnings about the potential repercussions of our behaviour: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Greater scarcity of water will lead to an increase in the cost of food and the various products which depend on its use. Some studies warn that an acute water shortage may occur within a few decades unless urgent action is taken. The environmental repercussions could affect billions of people; it is also conceivable that the control of water by large multinational businesses may become a major source of conflict in this century. </b>[para.31]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Throughout the encyclical Pope Francis speaks specifically about other environmental issues besides water in some detail, often weaving in, as noted above, references to the impact not solely on the ‘natural’ environment but on our lives as well. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some sections read somewhat technical and feed directly into the debate, for example, between those who see humans as the primary, almost the exclusive agents of what less and less is called ‘global warming’ and more frequently the rather porous ‘climate change,’ and those who see any climate change as merely ‘natural’ occurrences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Likely the objective truth is some of both: the human and the natural.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Since this commentary is attempting to focus on the Holy Father’s words connected to the environment of the human heart most of the above noted will be skipped over.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation. In fact, the deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet: “Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest”. </span></b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">[para.48]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is another example of what strikes me as the dominate teaching, namely that our prime reason for having concern about, caring for our ‘common home’, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>is because it is we human beings who live in – yes IN I would stress, not on – this common home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When I was a boy in high summer only the wealthy could afford air conditioning, which in the years immediately after the war was one of many things which were both rare and expensive.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Those of us who lived in tenements because of poverty or small flat tar roofed working class houses would sit out on fire escapes or front stoops until the wee hours of the morning when things might cool down enough for a couple of hours of fitful sleep.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Exhausted men would head off to work, exhausted mothers to care for their families come morning , with no relief from the heat of the day the even more exhausted men would return in the evening, the even more exhausted women tend to supper, try to comfort their children.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Such is still reality for millions of people today, no relief from summer’s heat and in some countries serious diseases, like malaria, flourish compounding the suffering.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">It needs to be said that, generally speaking, there is little in the way of clear awareness of problems which especially affect the excluded. Yet they are the majority of the planet’s population, billions of people. These days, they are mentioned in international political and economic discussions, but one often has the impression that their problems are brought up as an afterthought, a question which gets added almost out of duty or in a tangential way, if not treated merely as collateral damage. Indeed, when all is said and done, they frequently remain at the bottom of the pile…… we have to realize that a true ecological approach<i> always</i> becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear <i>both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor</i>. </span></b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">[para.49]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Implicit in the above is a call to metanoia, the conversion of heart which is essential if we are to hear the cry of the poor, let alone the cry of the earth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I know an internationally renowned environmentalist who jets all over the globe, owns more than one mansion, is totally for abortion. Facts, not a judgement on the person, who is both seriously dedicated to their cause and very eloquent about it to boot – however while I have seen them in various documentaries about the plight of this or that species of plant or animal I have never known them to visit a refugee camp and experience the plight of our brothers and sisters who live there.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>The environmental conditions of such places are horrific and directly impact human beings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family. There are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide, still less is there room for the globalization of indifference. </span></b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">[para. 52] <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Disregard for the duty to cultivate and maintain a proper relationship with my neighbour, for whose care and custody I am responsible, ruins my relationship with my own self, with others, with God and with the earth. When all these relationships are neglected, when justice no longer dwells in the land, the Bible tells us that life itself is endangered. </b>[para. 70]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the whole second section of the encyclical, from which the above is taken, Pope Francis does a great teaching on the truth of Who has created us, and all of creation, why we exist and are beloved:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the word “creation” has a broader meaning than “nature”, for it has to do with God’s loving plan in which every creature has its own value and significance. Nature is usually seen as a system which can be studied, understood and controlled, whereas creation can only be understood as a gift from the outstretched hand of the Father of all, and as a reality illuminated by the love which calls us together into universal communion…….Every creature is thus the object of the Father’s tenderness, who gives it its place in the world. Even the fleeting life of the least of beings is the object of his love, and in its few seconds of existence, God enfolds it with his affection. Saint Basil the Great described the Creator as “goodness without measure”,…while Dante Alighieri spoke of “the love which moves the sun and the stars”….Consequently, we can ascend from created things “to the greatness of God and to his loving mercy”. </b>[paras. 76/77]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Like St. John Paul II, who while having an openness to the theories of evolution, always stressed that the factual beginning point, point of origin of everyone and all created things is God Himself, Pope Francis is also clear on this point: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Human beings, even if we postulate a process of evolution, also possess a uniqueness which cannot be fully explained by the evolution of other open systems. Each of us has his or her own personal identity and is capable of entering into dialogue with others and with God himself. Our capacity to reason, to develop arguments, to be inventive, to interpret reality and to create art, along with other not yet discovered capacities, are signs of a uniqueness which transcends the spheres of physics and biology. The sheer novelty involved in the emergence of a personal being within a material universe presupposes a direct action of God and a particular call to life and to relationship on the part of a “Thou” who addresses himself to another “thou”. The biblical accounts of creation invite us to see each human being as a subject who can never be reduced to the status of an object. </b>[para. 81]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the same time: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The ultimate destiny of the universe is in the fullness of God, which has already been attained by the risen Christ, the measure of the maturity of all things…Here we can add yet another argument for rejecting every tyrannical and irresponsible domination of human beings over other creatures. The ultimate purpose of other creatures is not to be found in us. Rather, all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things. Human beings, endowed with intelligence and love, and drawn by the fullness of Christ, are called to lead all creatures back to their Creator. </b>[para. 83]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the end of the Canon of the Mass, known as the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer, the Church, having articulated our common yearning to be admitted with our Blessed Mother, the Saints, all the faithful departed into heaven affirms:…<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">There, with the whole of creation, freed from the corruption of sin and death……<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The whole of creation!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Creation not as we now experience it, this adversarial reality between weather and human beings, certain creatures who pose a real danger such as poisonous snakes, disease and so forth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The ‘whole of creation’ means precisely the one freed from sin and death. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Before original sin there was no adversarial status in the Garden.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Indeed before Cain slew his brother there was no adversarial status between human beings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If we be converted, if we strive to lead lives, as Pope Francis urges, which are truly human lives, lives of loving concern for one another, the necessary first step in caring for our common home, then we shall not only see but dwell within what the author of the book of Revelation was granted to see and what is asked in the Canon of the Mass: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. <sup>&nbsp;</sup>I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. <sup>&nbsp;</sup>And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” </b>[21: 1-4]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Pope Francis affirms that: </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">God has written a precious book, “whose letters are the multitude of created <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_ftnref54">things present in the universe”…</a>…<u>.</u>We can say that “alongside revelation properly so-called, contained in sacred Scripture, there is a divine manifestation in the blaze of the sun and the fall of night”…<u>.</u> Paying attention to this manifestation, we learn to see ourselves in relation to all other creatures: “I express myself in expressing the world; in my effort to decipher the sacredness of the world, I explore my own”……[para. 85] </span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Further on the Holy Father stresses that: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A sense of deep communion with the rest of nature cannot be real if our hearts lack tenderness, compassion and concern for our fellow human beings. It is clearly inconsistent to combat trafficking in endangered species while remaining completely indifferent to human trafficking, unconcerned about the poor, or undertaking to destroy another human being deemed unwanted. This compromises the very meaning of our struggle for the sake of the environment….. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society. </b>[para.91]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">However this communion, a communion of love, will not, cannot, occur unless I truly know who I am as person, person created in the image and likeness of God: person who has breath of life because Life Himself, Love Himself has created me, person who is of the same flesh and blood, same immortal soul, is same beloved of God as every other human being.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Therefore since One alone is the Lord and Giver of Life, One alone has the right to take life: abortion is therefore the ultimate act of usurpation and idolatry, of arrogant murder.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Moreover, when our hearts are authentically open to universal communion, this sense of fraternity excludes nothing and no one. It follows that our indifference or cruelty towards fellow creatures of this world sooner or later affects the treatment we mete out to other human beings. We have only one heart, and the same wretchedness which leads us to mistreat an animal will not be long in showing itself in our relationships with other people. Every act of cruelty towards any creature is “contrary to human dignity”….We can hardly consider ourselves to be fully loving if we disregard any aspect of reality: “Peace, justice and the preservation of creation are three absolutely interconnected themes, which cannot be separated and treated individually without once again falling into reductionism”….Everything is related, and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth. </span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[para.92]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Throughout the encyclical there is a striking expectation, perhaps even a degree of assumption, that human beings, not necessarily in general but at least those who will read, heed, implement the call within this teaching of the Holy Father, truly know who we are, or if not are at least open to metanoia, that profound conversion of heart which will indeed bring us to truly consciousness of self in relation to those like myself, every other human being, and in right relationship with all of creation, rooted of course in communion of love with the Holy Trinity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Such authentic consciousness for many in our day is hampered in general by the vicissitudes of life in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, a time wherein if we are not numbed by extreme poverty, living in places of daily terrorist violence and various forms of oppression, are numbed by living in nations whose culture is ever more deeply enmeshed in the culture of death, darkness, nihilism and where for many ‘social media’ are the sum of their ‘contact’ with other human beings. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In Germany in 1940, a people either in bondage by the Nazis or part of the evil of Nazism, a man wrote a book: Die Umgestalgung in Christus, which because the Nazis forbade the author to publish in Germany, ultimately did not see the light of day in English until after the war.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Finally in 1948, titled in English: Transformation in Christ, the book was published. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>The author: Dietrich von Hildebrand.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I mention that background because in the common human pilgrimage as we move from childhood through the latter stages of life to discover the truth of: who am I; why am I?, is a struggle which occurs in the actual context of the place, culture, time in which we live and therefore often times external forces beyond our control may either enhance or impede our quest.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The gift of faith is a critical component because, frankly, if we do not know Christ we will remain forever incomprehensible to our very selves and therefore to Other who is God, and to other as other human beings, while other as all creation will be for us like a child chasing bubbles on a summer’s afternoon – the bubbles either float away beyond reach and sight or if caught and touched burst without leaving a trace.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Unconscious</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> man entrusts himself to the flow of events, without setting them at a distance; therefore he is incapable of surveying them. Though he may have single impressions of great intensity, no single fact will reveal itself to him in its full significance and purport, for each lacks connection with the other, and above all, with the primal cause of being and the ultimate meaning of the world. His life is wrapped in a cloud of obscurity. Perhaps such a person will receive, time and again, a strong religious impression, and in its consequence grasp, for a moment, the metaphysical situation of man; but he fails to awaken once for all, and no sooner is his mind distracted by some other impressions than the sphere of ultimate reality has again vanished from his sight. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></i></span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ, Ignatius Press edition, p. 65]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Pope Francis teaches: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">In the Christian understanding of the world, the destiny of all creation is bound up with the mystery of Christ, present from the beginning: “All things have been created though him and for him” (<i>Col </i>1:16)….The prologue of the Gospel of John (1:1-18) reveals Christ’s creative work as the Divine Word (<i>Logos</i>). But then, unexpectedly, the prologue goes on to say that this same Word “became flesh” (<i>Jn </i>1:14). One Person of the Trinity entered into the created cosmos, throwing in his lot with it, even to the cross. From the beginning of the world, but particularly through the incarnation, the mystery of Christ is at work in a hidden manner in the natural world as a whole, without thereby impinging on its autonomy. </b>[para.99]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This connects to von Hildebrand’s: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Only the Christian can be truly conscious in the full sense of the term. For he alone has a true vision of reality proper and a true conception of God and the supernatural realm, from which everything derives its ultimate meaning. </b>[op.cit.p.66]…..<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">It must be the purpose of a true Christian that his entire life be suffused by the light of truth, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lumen Christi.</i> </b>[ibid p.68]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Once our lives are entirely suffused with the light of Christ then we can incarnate this teaching of Pope Francis: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>Neglecting to monitor the harm done to nature and the environmental impact of our decisions is only the most striking sign of a disregard for the message contained in the structures of nature itself. When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities – to offer just a few examples – it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected. Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute dominion, the very foundations of our life begin to crumble, for “instead of carrying out his role as a cooperator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature”. </b>[para.117]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="line" style="margin: 1em 0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></span></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/w32_NK2ox54" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/w32_NK2ox54/laudato-si-commentary.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2015/10/laudato-si-commentary.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-7107115345278742068Sun, 21 Jun 2015 15:26:00 +00002015-06-22T09:39:27.748-06:00THE GIRLS AND THE GREEN WORM<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When Pope Francis released his encyclical LAUDATO SI: On the Care of our Common Home typically the media lifted a few phrases designed to render people on either side of the environmental debate apoplectic.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Currently I am doing a careful meditative reading of the encyclical which, surprise and spoiler alert, fundamentally is focused on the ecology of the human heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In a few days I will begin work on a commentary, for today a simple story about two girls and a green worm, which is also about the human heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is my custom when travelling by bus or on the light rail system in this metropolis to pray the Jesus Prayer and the Rosary for everyone I travel with and in the neighbourhoods we travel through.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The main distractions these days are people chatting loudly [which made sense on the old phone system of my childhood which was invariably so weak loudness was necessary] on their ubiquitous cell phones seemingly so oblivious to the fact others can hear, the speakers reveal intimate details about relationships, health, criminal charges etc., you are left wondering whatever has happened to a sacred sense of self.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">However the very day the Holy Father’s encyclical was released on the bus was a different distraction triggered by two young girls sitting in front of me, each one on the aisle seat either side of the aisle and obviously close friends. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Teenagers, they initially were chatting back and forth, often their sentences piling onto each other, of things girls of that age loudly talk about when suddenly one of them, pointing down to the seat opposite and ahead of her said: “Wow! Look at that!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Admittedly I glanced and noticed one of those little green worms, which often hang from tree leaves this time of year, hanging from the edge of a seat.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Her friend noted the creature was cute and said they needed to get it and protect it until they could take it outside.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So between them, with their small purses they nudged the worm from its perch onto, in turn, their purses and kept transferring the worm back and forth as their hands got tired from constantly twisting their purses so the worm could slither around and not fall off.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">About twenty minutes later when the bus arrived at the terminal where they got off I watched as they walked to a nearby tree and placed the creature in its new home.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">St. Francis was smiling I am sure!<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pope Francis would be proud of them too.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/1GhUkmI_okQ" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/1GhUkmI_okQ/the-girls-and-greem-worm.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2015/06/the-girls-and-greem-worm.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-6930055670330761116Wed, 10 Jun 2015 02:35:00 +00002015-06-09T20:35:10.466-06:00POLICE: HOW SUDDENLY THE SACRIFICE<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For the first time in more than a quarter of a century a Police Officer has been shot and killed in the city where I live.<o:p></o:p></span><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The vast majority of men and women in this and countless other cities around the world when they leave home for their daily work do not step into the stark reality of deliberate confrontation with evil.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Police Officers, not unlike Gandalf, stand between us and those who spew hatred and violence, seeking to destroy the lives, even the very person of fellow human beings.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By their very uniforms and courageous presence, more than any particular weapons they may carry, Police Officers declare: “YOU SHALL NOT PASS.”, and sometimes, as has happened in this city, such a stance costs an Officer, a fellow human being, their life.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Such a murder tears asunder the Officer’s family: spouse, children, parents, siblings, and tears into the hearts of fellow Officers locally, across the nation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Suddenly a memory came. A memory nearly seventy years in the past.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We were all very small children born during the war heading to school. Many of us were orphaned, though I was not, but all one way or another were living with the absence of a father.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the busy intersection near the school, in the middle of the road, on his seemingly huge black horse, each morning assuring our safe passage, was a Police Officer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some child started calling out a greeting, picked up by the rest of us, which looking back makes sense, though I recall at the time telling myself the man on the horse was not whom the child claimed, calling out each morning: “Hello Officer Daddy.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Officer never responded by word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He just smiled and with his commanding presence made sure we crossed in safety.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Tragically now there are two small boys, sons of the slain Officer, who will never utter ‘Daddy” again. No longer will that good man, husband, father, come through the door to have them run into his arms.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Parents, always hug your children.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I am old enough to be aware amongst the tens of thousands of police in this country not every single one is imbued with integrity – but then in what profession, what group are the ranks therein made up solely of saints?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the Holy Gospel according to St. John police officers were sent to arrest Jesus [7:32], however the police did not and when challenged by those who had sent them why they had not arrested Jesus said: “No man ever spoke like this man.” [7:46]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Commenting on this event in his book LIFE OF CHRIST, Ven. Fulton Sheen notes: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The very fact that the policemen had an overwhelming impression made upon them and yielded themselves to His fountains of benediction was an indication of the power He had over men of good will. <u>The vocation of a policeman was sanctified that day when these officers refused to arrest the Saviour.<o:p></o:p></u></b></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;">Police Officer's Prayer to St. Michael<br /><br />Saint Michael, heaven's glorious commissioner of police,<br />who once so neatly and successfully cleared God's premises<br />of all its undesirables, look with kindly and professional<br />eyes on your earthly force.<br /><br />Give us cool heads, stout hearts, and uncanny flair for<br />investigation and wise judgement.<br /><br />Make us the terror of burglars, the friend of children and<br />law-abiding citizens, kind to strangers, polite to bores,<br />strict with law-breakers and impervious to temptations.<br /><br />You know, Saint Michael, from your own experiences<br />with the devil that the police officer's lot on earth is not<br />always a happy one; but your sense of duty that so<br />pleased God, your hard knocks that so surprised the <br />devil, and your angelic self-control give us inspiration.<br /><br />And when we lay down our night sticks, enroll us in your<br />heavenly force, where we will be as proud to guard the <br />throne of God as we have been to guard the city of all<br />the people. Amen.<br />&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/P1uHAumBejU" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/P1uHAumBejU/police-how-suddenly-sacrifice.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2015/06/police-how-suddenly-sacrifice.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-468156341926108662Sun, 10 May 2015 22:25:00 +00002015-05-10T16:25:43.340-06:00MOTHERHOOD<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;">On this Mother’s Day some thoughts from Pope St. John Paul on motherhood from his Apostolic Letter on the Dignity and Vocation of Women: from section VI, Para. 18:</span><span style="color: #663300; font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The human being - both male and female - is the only being in the world which God willed for its own sake. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is the profoundly reality that God who IS Love, creates us to be His beloved and infuses within us the capacity to love, to love Him, to love one another and through Jesus this love is sanctified when in particular a man and a woman make the gift of self one to another in holy, Sacramental marriage wherein they cooperate with God Himself in the generation of new life, the life of another beloved person.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The eternal mystery of generation, which is in God himself, the one and Triune God (cf. <i>Eph </i>3:14-15), is reflected in the woman's motherhood and in the man's fatherhood. Human parenthood is something shared by both the man and the woman…….Although both of them together are parents of their child, <i>the woman's motherhood constitutes a special "part" in this shared parenthood, </i>and the most demanding part…..It is the woman who "pays" directly for this shared generation, which literally absorbs the energies of her body and soul. It is therefore necessary that <i>the man </i>be fully aware that in their shared parenthood he owes <i>a special debt to the woman. </i>No programme of "equal rights" between women and men is valid unless it takes this fact fully into account.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So many women throughout the world often find themselves callously abandoned by men, abused by them, left to care for their children as single mothers, often in extreme poverty; other women live in countries where distorted notions rooted in disordered cultural/religious traditions continue to view women as a type of property; other women, mothers, struggle to care for their children in places of war and extreme violence, frequently living under terrible conditions in overcrowded refugee camps.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As men we need to put more effort into encouraging our brothers, especially young men, to take seriously the duty of fatherhood, to take seriously being husbands, to take seriously what self-gift to other really implies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the woman's womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and "understands" with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the "beginning", the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings - not only towards her own child, but every human being - which profoundly marks the woman's personality. It is commonly thought that <i>women </i>are more capable than men of paying attention <i>to another person, </i>and that motherhood develops this predisposition even more. The man - even with all his sharing in parenthood - always remains "outside" the process of pregnancy and the baby's birth; in many ways he has to <i>learn </i>his own <i>"fatherhood" from the mother.<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/2-CYv6HdYro" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/2-CYv6HdYro/motherhood.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2015/05/motherhood.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-3045188281984019477Wed, 29 Apr 2015 21:30:00 +00002015-04-29T15:30:45.123-06:00POPE FRANCIS DOES IT AGAIN!<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Since the release earlier this month of the Papal Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy I have been reflecting on the words therein of Pope Francis struck by how, to use the common expression, he has ‘done it again!’, namely placed before, not only Catholics but the whole world, a challenge to open wide the doors of our being both to God who is Love and to one another.<o:p></o:p></span><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rooted in the Old Testament tradition of a Jubilee Year, themselves steeped in mercy, repentance, thanksgiving and care of the poor and vulnerable, within the Roman Catholic Church there have been over the millennia some thirty Jubilees.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">However the first formal one did not occur until 1300 and prior to this one was the Great Jubilee to usher in the new millennium called for by St. John Paul II.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The present Jubilee will begin on December 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception and conclude on November 20, 2016, the Solemnity of Christ the King. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pope Francis begins by reminding us that: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy. These words might well sum up the mystery of the Christian faith. Mercy has become living and visible in Jesus of Nazareth, reaching its culmination in him.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In a world so filled with hatred and violence, in a word with sin, Pope Francis reassures us that: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When faced with the gravity of sin, God responds with the fullness of mercy. Mercy will always be greater than any sin, and no one can place limits on the love of God who is ever ready to forgive.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Whenever we are troubled or discouraged by our own sins or the evil in the world as we observe on a daily basis things such as terrorism, human trafficking and the like, satan will attempt to convince us he is more powerful than he actually is.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">God’s merciful love is the only real, true, pure, selfless power there is and God uses His Divine power to fill us with His merciful, forgiving, healing, comforting love.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Clearly the following comes from deep within the heart of our beloved Holy Father, Pope Francis: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">How much I desire that the year to come will be steeped in mercy, so that we can go out to every man and woman, bringing the goodness and tenderness of God! May the balm of mercy reach everyone, both believers and those far away, as a sign that the Kingdom of God is already present in our midst!<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Today many nations are showing mercy to the people of Nepal in the aftermath of the earthquake, many ordinary people in Baltimore are trying to show mercy by standing between the angry mob and the police so violence ends and dialogue begins.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Hidden from such public view others are showing mercy by volunteering to keep vigil in various hospices, in soup kitchens, bring meals to shut-ins: the ways of fulfilling the works of mercy, of being merciful, are innumerable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">All that is needed is love’s imagination.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Holy Father reminds us that:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Throughout the history of humanity, God will always be the One who is present, close, provident, holy, and merciful.<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Therefore Pope Francis also reminds us that: …..<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the mercy of God is not an abstract idea, but a concrete reality with which he reveals his love as of that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of love for their child. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that this is a “visceral” love. It gushes forth from the depths naturally, full of tenderness and compassion, indulgence and mercy.</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">To fully appreciate this we need to be steeped in all of Sacred Scripture, which overflows with examples of this Divine Love, culminating in Christ Jesus laying down His life for us, the same Jesus who calls us to be as merciful as our Heavenly Father, loving one another as we are loved by Him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Placing before us anew the essence of the Church’s life and mission Pope Francis notes that:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Mercy is the very foundation of the Church’s life…</span></b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">..and…..</span></span><span style="color: #663300; font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Church’s very credibility is seen in how she shows merciful and compassionate love.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is tempting at this juncture to note at some length where great reform is needed as regards how the Church, or more accurately those with power within the Church, from the Vatican to the smallest parish, exercise mercy, both externally towards parishioners and people in general throughout the world and internally towards priests, religious, consecrated lay people.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A temptation, yes. To be detailed here with suggestions, no.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">These, at least for a priest-hermit, are things best brought to the Lord in prayer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Everyone can read the teachings of Pope Francis, heed his words, follow his example, and each of us, whatever our state in life, are called upon by Pope Francis to exemplify and exercise this mandate of mercy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pope Francis guides us by reminding us that: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">In order to be capable of mercy, therefore, we must first of all dispose ourselves to listen to the Word of God. This means rediscovering the value of silence in order to meditate on the Word that comes to us. In this way, it will be possible to contemplate God’s mercy and adopt it as our lifestyle.<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In this, and in all things, we have Our Blessed Mother, among whose titles is Our Lady of Mercy, to help us as Pope Francis notes: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">My thoughts now turn to the Mother of Mercy. May the sweetness of her countenance watch over us in this Holy Year, so that all of us may rediscover the joy of God’s tenderness. No one has penetrated the profound mystery of the incarnation like Mary. Her entire life was patterned after the presence of mercy made flesh. The Mother of the Crucified and Risen One has entered the sanctuary of divine mercy because she participated intimately in the mystery of His love.<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We have just over seven months to prepare to cross the threshold into the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy and meditating upon the teachings and encouragements given us by Pope Francis in the Bull of Indiction, is one way to prepare so that: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">In this Jubilee Year, may the Church echo the word of God that resounds strong and clear as a message and a sign of pardon, strength, aid, and love. May she never tire of extending mercy, and be ever patient in offering compassion and comfort. May the Church become the voice of every man and woman, and repeat confidently without end: “Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old” (<i>Ps</i> 25:6).<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/Hc7KT-iJHUA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/Hc7KT-iJHUA/pope-francis-does-it-again.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2015/04/pope-francis-does-it-again.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-5810202508547498134Thu, 02 Apr 2015 21:10:00 +00002015-04-02T15:10:46.837-06:00HOLY WEEK: MEDITATIONS<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The following are various passages form several sources used for meditation this Holy Week:<o:p></o:p></span><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">From GOD-SENT, by Roy Abraham Varghese: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mother of Christ wants all her children to be saved: she yearns to save them [through their acceptance of her Son] not simply from temporal chastisement but an eternal chastisement that comes from their freely chosen everlasting separation from God. If we ask why the Virgin weeps in her apparitions and her images around the world, the answer is simple: Ultimately there is only one thing to be sad about in life and in eternity, and that is the eternal loss of a soul. As she has said more than one in her apparitions: she weeps because of the hardness of hearts, because of the worldwide suffering that will result from divine retribution and most of all because of the perdition awaiting those who will not obey.</i> [p. 7, op.cit.]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">On Palm/Passion Sunday in 1937, a decade not unlike our own with assaults on the Church and family, wars and rumors of wars, Pope Pius XI had his encyclical shining light on the darkness of Nazism, Mit Brennender Sorge smuggled into and read from all the pulpits in Germany.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Like Our Blessed Mother, Pope Pius, as must every Pontiff, sought to speak truth, to encourage the faithful, by proclaiming the Gospel: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Original sin” is the hereditary but impersonal fault of Adam’s descendants, who have sinned in him [Rom.v.12]. It is the loss of grace, and therefore of eternal life, together with a propensity to evil, which everybody must, with the assistance of grace, penance, resistance and moral effort, repress and conquer…The cross of Christ, thought it has become to many a stumbling block and foolishness [1 Cor.i.23] remains for the believer the holy sign of his redemption, the emblem of moral strength and greatness. We live in its shadow and die in its embrace. It will stand on our grave as a pledge of our faith and our hope in eternal light…Whoever exalts race, of the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community….whoever raise these notes above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds. </i>[cf. op.cit. paras: 25, 26, &amp; 8]<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">St. John Paul II places before us the reality that the merciful love of God is greater than our capacity for sin<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">It<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="-1"> is "God, who is rich in mercy"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><u><sup>1</sup></u></a><u><sup> </sup></u>whom Jesus Christ has revealed to us as Father: it is His very Son who, in Himself, has manifested Him and made Him known to us.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="-2"></a><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia.html#%242"><span style="mso-bookmark: -2;"><sup><span style="color: windowtext;">2</span></sup></span><span style="mso-bookmark: -2;"></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: -2;"></span>Memorable in this regard is the moment when Philip, one of the twelve Apostles, turned to Christ and said: "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied"; and Jesus replied: "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me...? He who has seen me has seen the Father."<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="-3"></a><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia.html#%243"><span style="mso-bookmark: -3;"><sup><span style="color: windowtext;">3</span></sup></span><span style="mso-bookmark: -3;"></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: -3;"></span> These words were spoken during the farewell discourse at the end of the paschal supper, which was followed by the events of those holy days during which confirmation was to be given once and for all of the fact that "God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="-4"> us alive together with Christ.</a>”…..</span></i></span><span style="color: #663300; font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The cross of Christ on Calvary is also a witness to the strength of evil against the very Son of God, against the one who, alone among all the sons of men, was by His nature absolutely innocent and free from sin, and whose coming into the world was untainted by the disobedience of Adam and the inheritance of original sin. And here, precisely in Him, in Christ, justice is done to sin at the price of His sacrifice, of His obedience "even to death."</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="-29"></a><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia.html#%2429"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-bookmark: -29;"><sup><span style="color: windowtext;">81</span></sup></span><span style="mso-bookmark: -29;"></span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: -29;"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> He who was without sin, "God made him sin for our sake."</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="-2A"></a><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia.html#%242A"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-bookmark: -2A;"><sup><span style="color: windowtext;">82</span></sup></span><span style="mso-bookmark: -2A;"></span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: -2A;"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Justice is also brought to bear upon death, which from the beginning of man's history had been allied to sin. Death has justice done to it at the price of the death of the one who was without sin and who alone was able-by means of his own death-to inflict death upon death.</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="-2B"></a><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia.html#%242B"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-bookmark: -2B;"><sup><span style="color: windowtext;">83</span></sup></span><span style="mso-bookmark: -2B;"></span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: -2B;"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> In this way the cross of Christ, on which the Son, consubstantial with the Father, renders full justice to God, is also a radical revelation of mercy, or rather of the love that goes against what constitutes the very root of evil in the history of man: against sin and death…… The Church proclaims the truth of God's mercy revealed in the crucified and risen Christ, and she professes it in various ways. Furthermore, she seeks to practice mercy towards people through people, and she sees in this an indispensable condition for solicitude for a better and "more human" world, today and tomorrow. However, at no time and in no historical period-especially at a moment as critical as our own-can the Church forget the prayer that is a cry for the mercy of God amid the many forms of evil which weigh upon humanity and threaten it. Precisely this is the fundamental right and duty of the Church in Christ Jesus, her right and duty towards God and towards humanity. The more the human conscience succumbs to secularization, loses its sense of the very meaning of the word "mercy," moves away from God and distances itself from the mystery of mercy, the more the Church has the right and the duty to appeal to the God of mercy "with loud cries."</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="-3R"></a><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia.html#%243R"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-bookmark: -3R;"><sup><span style="color: windowtext;">135</span></sup></span><span style="mso-bookmark: -3R;"></span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: -3R;"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">These "loud cries" should be the mark of the Church of our times, cries uttered to God to implore His mercy, the certain manifestation of which she professes and proclaims as having already come in Jesus crucified and risen, that is, in the Paschal Mystery. It is this mystery which bears within itself the most complete revelation of mercy, that is, of that love which is more powerful than death, more powerful than sin and every evil, the love which lifts man up when he falls into the abyss and frees him from the greatest threats. </span></span></i><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">[Dives In Misericordia, paras. 1; 8.1; 15]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Pope Francis in his General Audience address this week reminds us that:</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">The Triduum opens with the commemoration of the Last Supper. On the eve of his Passion, Jesus offered the Father his Body and his Blood under the species of bread and wine and, giving it as nutriment to the Apostles, he commanded them to perpetuate the offer in his memory. Recalling the <em><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">washing of the feet, </span></em>the Gospel of this celebration expresses the same meaning of the Eucharist under another perspective. Jesus – as a servant – washes the feet of Simon Peter and the other eleven disciples (Cf. <em><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">John </span></em>13:4-5). With this prophetic gesture, He expresses the meaning of his life and of his Passion, as service to God and to brothers: “For the Son of man has come not to be served but to serve” (<em><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">Mark </span></em>10:45)….</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">Then, …. in the liturgy of <em><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">Good Friday</span></em> we meditate on the mystery of the Death of Christ and we adore the Cross. In the last moments of his life, before rendering his spirit to the Father, Jesus said: “It is finished!” (<em><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">John </span></em>19:30). What does this word mean that Jesus says “It is finished”? It means that the work of salvation is finished, that all the Scriptures find their fulfilment in the love of Christ, immolated Lamb. With his sacrifice, Jesus transformed the greatest iniquity into the greatest love…</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> </span></i><em><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">Holy Saturday </span></em><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">is the day in which the Church contemplates Christ’s rest in the tomb after the victorious combat of the cross. On Holy Saturday the Church identifies herself, once again, with Mary: all her faith is gathered in Her, the first and perfect disciple, the first and perfect believer. In the darkness that enveloped Creation, She remains alone holding the flame of faith lighted, hoping against all hope (Cf. <em><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">Romans </span></em>4:18)……And in the great <em><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">Easter Vigil</span></em>, in the late evening, in which the <em><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;;">Alleluia </span></em></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">resounds again, we celebrate the Risen Christ, center and end of the cosmos and of history; we watch full of hope while awaiting his return, when Easter will have its full manifestation. Sometimes the darkness of night seems to penetrate the soul; sometimes we think: “now there is nothing to be done,” and the heart no longer finds the strength to love ... However, precisely in that darkness Christ lights the fire of the love of God: a flash breaks the darkness and announces a new beginning.&nbsp; Something begins in the most profound darkness! We know that the night is darkest before the day begins. However, precisely in the darkness, it is Christ that conquers and lights the fire of love. The stone of sorrow is overturned leaving space for hope. See the great mystery of Easter! On this holy night the Church gives us the light of the Risen One, so that in us there is not the lament of the one who says “now ...”, but the hope of one who <em><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">opens himself to a present full of [promise for] future</span></em>: Christ has conquered death, and we with Him. Our life does not end before the stone of the sepulchre! Our life goes beyond with the hope of Christ who has risen! – in fact, from that sepulchre. We are called as Christians to be watchmen of the morning, who are able to perceive the signs of the Risen One, as the women and the disciples did who went to the sepulchre at dawn on the first day of the week.<o:p></o:p></span></i><br /> <br /><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></span><br /> <br /><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></span></i><br /> <br /><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Segoe UI&quot;; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></span></i><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/jPpsEKv1HRk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/jPpsEKv1HRk/holy-week-meditations.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2015/04/holy-week-meditations.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13860237.post-3888866990621993269Fri, 13 Mar 2015 21:53:00 +00002015-03-13T15:53:34.193-06:00SOUNDS IN THE HEART<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For the first time since early October the sun is shining high enough in the sky that the temperature is well above zero, indeed warm enough the snow is melting.<o:p></o:p></span><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It was hearing the unique sound of a shovel scrapping against cement as a neighbour pushed ice off the sidewalk into the gutter, where the chunks of ice splashed into the running melt water, I found myself surprised by sound and stood still, listening, remembering other sounds.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I will admit most of my life not giving much thought to sound[s] per se.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Like breathing, seeing, most tactile realities of being alive, never much thought given unless something goes wrong: headaches perhaps make us brain aware; earaches, sore throat, running and being ‘out of breath’ – an odd expression as we are still, obviously, breathing! – how many gifts taken for granted!<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now that I am in my seventies and eye sight requires powerful glasses, hard running days are over, I am becoming more aware of the various gifts which both enable the physical person to function: to communicate, see, move around, reflect, imagine, and remember.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Likewise I am more likely these days to say to God: thank-You for breath of life, gift of a new day, the ability to walk, touch, hear, see, and remember.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Air raid sirens: common in my childhood, even after the war, well into the early sixties they would be tested every week. In the fifties they would be tested during school hours and the nuns would make sure we were all huddled under our desks. I thought the nuns very brave as we were supposed to be practising in case it was an actual nuclear attack and yet they simply walked among the rows of desks praying their rosaries – I figured if we got hit they would be goners!<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cracking of house in winter: Being poor there was not much heat where we lived and the wooden tenements would crack, and I mean extremely loud cracking which at night would wake you with a fright! <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Gregorian chant: In my childhood long before Vatican II Sunday meant High Mass and Gregorian chant, the organ played at full blast, the unique sound of thurible hitting the extended chain as the priest incensed the altar, the bells rung at the Sanctus and various points during the Consecration and before Holy Communion – and too in those days the bells in the church tower would ring for the Angelus and I remember them tolling when Pope Pius died.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The slap of stick against puck and skates cutting through the ice playing hockey as a boy in the winter, on the streets in the summer and the oft heard cry: Car! – meaning a break in the game until some vehicle had passed by.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The haunting drum beat heard by millions around the world during the funeral of President Kennedy; the first voices heard when astronauts circled the moon and the “Small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Laughter, crying, first words of a child, first time hearing their variations on Papa or Mama or Granddad/Grandma; the sound, so often heard by doctors, nurses, priests, family members, of last breaths; singing birds, great symphonies, rush hour traffic, ‘breaking news’ – which is delivered which such intensity, often not actually about something serious like 9/11, but breathlessly delivered even about snowstorms!<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That haunting grief filled yet love filled, repeated over and over: “Santo Subito” from the crowd in St. Peter’s Square as then Pope, now St. John Paul II, was laid to rest.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the fall the honking of geese foretells winter is nigh, in spring summer is soon!<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I remember standing at the edge of the tunnel under Niagara Falls, the pounding water seeming more a solid than a liquid.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Perhaps no two sounds reach deeper into the human heart than a plaintive: “Help me.” – or the uniqueness of gratitude becoming sound: “Thank-you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Is there sound within the Holy Trinity as love is infinite-infinitely communed?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Or is that always has been, is, always will be love so pure, so absolute it transcends sound and is such brilliant light it is pure silence?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">God Incarnate, Jesus, spoke and the sound of His voice, the gift of His words, can be heard every time we open and ponder the Holy Gospel.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Yes, I am most grateful there are sounds to be heard, to be remembered, yet to reach my ears.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></o:p></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~4/0n5Tvcyyhrk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hopeforpriests/hcWS/~3/0n5Tvcyyhrk/sounds-in-heart.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph)0http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/2015/03/sounds-in-heart.html